


Overpower Thee

by AirStank



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Caretaking, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Mental Health Issues, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:17:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3564326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirStank/pseuds/AirStank
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asthmatic Pandora Jackson chooses to leave her monotone life in LS behind to take care of her dementia-stricken grandmother in rural Blaine County. What seems like a peaceful return to pleasant childhood memories becomes a struggle to come to terms with her cousin's life of crime. Not to mention the outrageous friends he keeps, one of whom in particular makes her question her life choices in a way no one else could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Strings Attached

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this isn't my first time around the fanfic block, but it _is_ my first time dipping my toe into the GTA fandom. Wowza, I'm nervous, especially because I went into this thinking: I can't write Trevor, how do you WRITE TREVOR. So we'll see, hopefully I can capture him. Let me know how you feel about this, if you like it/what needs work! I don't have a beta or anything, so I'm sorry if there are typos or weird sentences--have I mentioned this is my first time writing in a few years? Yikes. :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing... Pandora 'Jack' Jackson.

“Panda, are you listening?”

I look up from the rip in the cheap diner booth fabric, finding it hard to maintain eye contact which such a pitying stare. _Ouch_.

The fluorescents of this old side-of-the-road diner make my eyes itch, almost to the point of appearing to be tears forming. Oliver, damn his soft eyes, is smiling carefully at me. Like this whole situation must be tragic for me and he felt very guilty for doing it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, of course. I'm the younger of the two of us, the one with nothing to lose, the one who started this arrangement between two adults thinking that I could handle it without getting attached too fast.

 _Friends with benefits, no strings attached! Crap_ … “Yeah, Oliver, sorry. I’m listening, honest.”

It seemed like the entirety of the St. Fiacre Hospital staff had known that Pandora Jackson the Medical Records clerk had a crush on Oliver the EVS guy. He is thirty-seven to my twenty-four and has gray hair sprinkled across his temples, something that has always made me a bit frisky. Oliver is handsome in the nice guy sort of way, with kind hazel eyes that light up with his mega-watt smile. And that was what I liked the most, that he looked so unconditionally kind. He was, _is_ , a very kind man, almost to the point of being painfully vanilla—for the most part. I even let him call me ‘Panda’ or ‘Pandora’, when I had made it strictly clear to every stranger since my 8th birthday that I should be referred to as my surname: Jack, short for Jackson. Both of my names I despised; one sounded like it belonged to some sort of fortune teller and the other distinctly and harshly male. But hey, lesser of two evils, eh? But God, _Panda_? _The worst one of all_. I’m almost positive that the last person I let call me Panda was my uncle Bruce—who always managed to smell like piss incidentally; I hocked a fat loogie into his Pißwasser in my own righteous thirteen year old brand of justice. Never heard that shit from Uncle Bruce again after that.

I almost think about telling Oliver that, to show him that my initial terms of ‘no strings attached’ didn’t mean that I was an emotionless hag; that I did, in fact, fall for him a little bit in the three months that we had been screwing. He was special in the way that I let him call me a name that was the source of most of my adolescent anxiety. Like most things, I over-analyzed this, and began to wonder if I had honestly fucking fell in love with this guy just because he was good in bed and had a gorgeous smile. No. I don’t love him. I don’t.

“I mean, it’s just that… well, you went into this making it very clear to me that you didn’t _want_ a relationship.” Oliver pressed on in a soft tone, seeming to be very conscious of the quiet atmosphere of the diner. Quiet but not empty: the middle-aged, ruby red haired waitress was eavesdropping from where she wiped down the cracked bar counter a few booths down. Whatever. “And you’re so young, you have so much life and so many experiences ahead of you, whereas me? Well, Panda, I’m ready to settle down.”

I blinked at those words. _Settle down_. I’m sure I could pinpoint the exact moment in my life that I decided to be completely freaked by those two simple words if I had the time and the brain space, but that was a whole other crap-shoot that I couldn’t look into right now. I can’t pry if I’m not ready to have a serious sit down to really think about what the hell was wrong with me. So I just smile, a little sadly but I can’t help that, and nod.

“Oliver, I know. I _figured_ , I mean to say. And that’s okay! I understand that.” I shrugged good-naturedly and felt honest about that much. Yeah I had a crush, but was I willing to settle down with him? The very thought of it made my stomach ache with anxiety. “I knew this was probably going to happen from the beginning. If I were at that place, I would be able to give you that. But right now? I’m… Well I’m a bit of a mess.”

We both laughed in a relieved sort of way, meeting eyes affectionately. He reaches a hand across the table to hold one of mine, squeezing my knuckles sweetly. “Not to mention that you’re moving to Grapeseed! I still can’t believe that, Panda. I can’t picture you… _there_.”

I laugh again, a little more earnestly, and he grins that beautiful smile and shakes his head sympathetically. Yes, Grapeseed—as if I had forgotten about _that_ big cherry on top of this shit-sundae of a week.

“Oh you heard that, huh? I feel like most people know my life plans before I get the chance to figure them out.” I sigh, sounding a bit whiney and that irks me a bit. I discreetly remove my hand from his in favor of playing with the straw in my milkshake.

“Sorry, news travels fast at work.”

“Yeah, well that’s alright. I guess I figured that working at a hospital would make employees less inclined to gossip.” I rolled my eyes without much malice. “You know, with HIPAA and all.”

“Hah. Right.” He watches me expectantly, obviously waiting for my explanation as to why exactly I’m moving to the ass end of nowhere when I already live in the supposed gleaming gem of San Andreas: Los Santos. “Is that why you’re leaving? Did you talk about someone’s colonoscopy report in too much detail? Are the HIPAA police out to get you?” Oliver grinned with a conspiratory sort of tone, his eyes gleaming as I bark out a laugh.

“Nah. Nothing so exciting and treacherous.” I admit, leaning forward to tongue my straw into my mouth before taking a long draw of the chocolate milkshake. “My grandma still lives out in Grapeseed, in the house my grandpa built her before he died. It’s one of the oldest pieces of property in the area, so I’m told, so it’s falling apart like you’d expect… and seeing as her care-taker pissed off in favor of moving to Chumash with her sugar-daddy… well, that leaves little ol’ me.”

“Ah, I see.” He nods slowly, smiling at me as if I had said something cute. “Don’t want to put her in a home?”

I glance up at him, feeling raw over such a suggestion but I know that he didn’t mean offense. Most everyone I’ve told has the same reaction: moving from Los Santos to _Grapeseed_ , at _ **twenty-four**_? Yikes. What a life-ender, is what I can imagine they’re thinking. Hell, that’s what _I_ think at least three times a day. The idea that all the progress I’ve made in my ‘adult life’ thus far is about to be reset is more than a bit daunting. It took me 7 months of sloshing through the title of ‘temp’ until I was hired on full time in the Medical Records department, and by then I knew that job like the best of them. It wasn’t hard work, not complicated either, and really all that it required was strict and total confidentiality. That I could handle, that was not asking too much. But that all changed once I got word from my cousin, Quentin—a resident of the lovely and always classy Sandy Shores—that grandma was about to be shipped off to an elderly care facility if one of us didn’t step in.

In the moment I heard those words over the phone, I was immediately transported back to the long summers of my childhood. Those hot, dry, merciless summers that I spent under the oak trees of my grandma Hazel’s house; it was a time where mornings were spent watching classic cartoons on her ancient TV set with her cherished french toast stretching my belly, and where afternoons were spent in the Alamo sea that was just a stone’s throw from her humble home, the water warmed by the unforgiving sun and clear as glass. Those were the months that I spent all year round waiting for, the time of my year that washed away any fears or hurts that had gathered in my young heart. My grandma was a hilarious yet sweet sort of woman. She was a great love of my life, though in these past few years since moving from Blaine County to Los Santos I had admittedly neglected her. It was easy to become separated from reality in a place like this, and so I think it’s the best thing that I leave while I can—even if I do return some day. 

"I couldn’t do that to her.” I answer simply, without letting any of my hurt into the words. He had no idea how much the thought of that beautiful woman rotting away in some home terrified me, so he didn’t need to be punished for such an assumption. “And anyway, I’m not a city girl, never have been. I sort of hate it here most of the time, its hell on my asthma too. I couldn’t tell you how much worse my attacks have been since moving here. So really, it’s better for her and me.” I smiled, truly believing my words of assurance, and took another sip of my milkshake to end that topic of conversation. 

“Right! Well that makes sense then. And you’ll be sure to visit?” 

He was just trying to make pleasantries: I would not visit, not him at least. We were passed the point of trying to be friends, no matter how maturely this ended. 

“If I have the time! I already have a job lined up at the clinic over in Sandy Shores so I’m thinking I’ll have most of my time filled up.” It was a lame excuse, and of course he saw through it, but we both acted like it made perfect sense. 

“Yeah I’m thinking my time will be pretty filled up too...” He says, quite vaguely, and I can see him sizing me up before he speaks again. “I’m actually going to go camping up near Mount Chiliad this weekend, with, um, Kelly.” 

My eyes snap up from my milkshake and into his apologetic stare, searching his face for a moment before I raise an eyebrow. “Oh cool, I didn’t know you two were back together.” _Double ouch_. 

He beams at me in relief, as if he was expecting a shit-storm, and then proceeds to nod sheepishly. “Yeah well I didn’t expect it honestly! She decided to leave her boyfriend for me, I guess. I mean, I never really got over her in the first place, so I think this is working out nicely.” 

I let out a little bit of a wince at his words, stabbing my straw into the melted remains of my shake a little more roughly than before. He notices. 

“I mean, I’m just relieved that you’re so mature, you know?” He says quickly, clumsily. “You’re just… a great girl. And some guy is going to be lucky to have you.” 

_Yikes._

“One can hope.” I sound a bit pissy, more so than I wanted to portray, so I save a little face by chuckling and shrugging at his now concerned expression. “Well Oliver, I’ve got to split. Boxes to pack, you know? But I’m glad we met up!” 

Oliver stands up quickly to match my pace, still looking a bit like a hurt puppy. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but then thinks better of it. I smash around through my overly large purse before I snatch up a bill, not bothering to look at how much it is before I stick it underneath my empty cup. “Thanks for suggesting this place—you were right: killer milkshakes.” 

“Hey, Panda, look…” I stop my awkward escape, looking up at his face midway through shoving my arms through my jacket. “I just want you to know… well, if things were different… well I would’ve—,” 

“Don’t sweat it, Oliver.” I step around the table to put my hand on his shoulder, mashing a strained smile on my face before leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “Have fun this weekend, okay? Good luck with Kelly.” 

He opens his mouth again, but one look into my eyes and his expression does a 180, even if it’s forced it’s still a relief. Oliver smiles that kind, unassuming smile before he nods, outstretching his hand in a signal for ‘ladies first’. I take the gesture to heart, swinging my purse with a thud over my shoulder before hurrying out of the diner. 


	2. Mean Old Breeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora arrives at the Jackson Home and sees her favorite cousin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit longer! :)

The drive from Los Santos to Blaine County is usually enough to give me an attack—the smog absolutely kills, it’s a wonder I didn’t croak within a week of moving to this place. Sure, LS has its famous allure and its wonders, but there was always something about the city that I hated deep down as a kid, even when on the other hand I always looked forward to the visits. Growing up in the boonies of the Paleto Bay area did very little to prepare me for the intensity of living in a place like LS. The people, the attitudes, the smells, the sounds: everything. 

Sure, when you’re a teenage girl sitting at home bundled up watching movies about the big cities you start to fantasize about striking out on your own, making a name for yourself in a place like Los Santos where you have the potential to be a model or an actress or a CEO of some big company. However, I very quickly learned that for every ‘dream come true’ there are fifty more tales of failure and stinging heartache.

I didn’t know what I wanted when I moved to Los Santos at twenty, all I knew was that I wanted ‘out’ and the city lights were the first place I looked. It was all very cliché of me. I don’t regret it necessarily, for it has certainly made me stronger, more independent and self-reliant. But I miss the image I had of LS before I saw it for what it truly was, the starry-eyed ideal that held firm and flourished on the occasional trips to the city that I’d make with my Auntie Dot as a kid. The _energy_ alone, shit: that _feeling_ that LS gave me remained the same astonishing experience despite every other ideal fading grudgingly due to jarring experience.

Buzzing, thumping, blaring, heated to boiling, hot garbage smell mixing with the dry taste of constant summer sun. Blinding blue skies cut by gleaming skyscrapers whose silhouettes sizzled and warped from the heat, contrasted in the distance by glittering gem-like ocean swells, and the _lights_ —God damn I’m rarely ever so mesmerized. Sure, what the city as a whole represented deep down was quite atrocious and pointless in the grand scheme of things, but that didn’t mean that it still didn’t inspire the little girl to come out in me again.

 _That’s what I’ll miss_ , I decided as Granny’s house came into view. I’d miss the feeling I associated with LS while growing up naïve and hopeful, the idea that this city made people into what they always wanted to be. And… And _shit_ , I always got over-emotional too fast and tended to then over-analyze my own emotions in order to right myself back to reality.

I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes as my rusty red Ingot came groaning to a stop beside Granny’s even rustier old cream Tornado. I realized only a moment later that yes, I am wearing make-up, and quickly yanked down the sun-visor to frown at the black mascara flakes that were now speckled under my eyes.

“Shit.” I whispered, knowing that if Granny was anything like she used to be, she’d make a comment on how ragged I looked if my appearance wasn’t in order. For as wonderful as she is, she’s still a former beauty-queen and, well, old habits die hard.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, feeling the tingling numbness in my ass from the long car ride travel along the tops of my thighs as I fished through my purse for a tissue. In the process I looked up just in time to notice that Granny’s Tornado was not the only car parked alongside the white picket fence. I squinted at the license plate on the beat up old red truck—Betty32—as I snapped the mirror back to the roof of my car, opting to just run my knuckles under my eyes to present some kind of togetherness. I _may_ have cried once or twice on the way over here, but mostly over the possible death of my sex life. _J, pull yourself together. This isn’t about you._

Still staring at the bizarre beat up truck that just _screamed_ ‘hillbilly’, I reached over and pawed around in my purse before I felt my phone’s weight in my hand. Cocking a brow, I stole a quick glance at the time: 4:47 pm. Too early for a dinner party, Granny’s a classy and punctual broad. Tossing the phone back into my bag, I sucked my teeth with a shrug and mentally prepared myself for meeting someone after a couple hour drive filled with racing thoughts and more than a few tears of self-pity. I wasn’t a recluse or anything, but that didn’t mean that a few veins of my former desperate shyness didn’t still remain. Sure, LS had thickened my skin, but beneath that I was still a bit of a wimp.

I decided the boxes could wait safely in my ride for a while. I twirled my key ring around my index finger, having to press the automatic car lock a couple times until I heard the reassuring ‘ _beep beep_!’

I was barely through the front gate, stepping around clucking hens wandering about the yard, before I heard that harsh yet comforting squeak of the screen door, followed by Granny’s shriek: “Oh lord!”

Looking up to see my grandma Hazel’s glittering gray eyes was enough to make me tear up again, and definitely enough for me to pick up my feet a little faster until I was breathlessly wrapping my arms around her.

 _Shit, I used to be shorter than her_ … I winced at that thought; also trying not to look too deeply into the fact that Granny felt infinitely more frail and small in my arms than I last remembered. I felt like I was _breaking_ her with my enthusiasm but I couldn’t help it; the smell of her, her voice, her clothes, her beautiful pearl earrings that I’ve never seen her without. She was beautiful and kind and _real_ , she gave me a sense of sincere safety that I hadn’t felt so comfortable with and sure of in years.

I swallowed hard and blinked rapidly, trying real hard not to cry, but hearing her start going got me flustered and nervous because then she’d start to worry if _I_ cried and then shit, I got a lungful of passing dust and started to choke a bit on my breath and my chest was getting so damn tight…

Granny knew an oncoming attack when she saw it.

“Okay baby, _okay_.” She crooned as I began to wheeze and hiccup, backing me up until I felt the support of a porch beam press solidly against my back. I struggled with my purse, jumbling through all the useless shit as I searched for my inhaler, feeling the prickling of cold fear along my arms as terrifying questions ran through my mind: _did I forget my medication at home? Did I not pack it all up? Did I not refill at the pharmacy before I left?_

“Jack, baby, its _fine_.” Granny smiled, trying to ease me into a sense of casual safety. She grabbed my shoulders as I began to wheeze loudly, taking one steadying hand off my shoulder to wrench off the hold I had on my throat. “Now stop that, honey. You just got too excited and a mean, old breeze caught ya off guard. See? That’s all.”

My eyes rolled rapidly over her face, knowing her to be right but still feeling the panic of my asthma attack consuming me. The muscles behind my breast felt tight and hot and my throat was thick with fuzz. I needed my inhaler but I couldn’t find it. _I can’t find it_ , I tried to convey to her and she nodded in instant recognition.

“Hey baby, come out here and help me! Jack’s got an attack.” Granny commanded over her shoulder without taking her eyes off mine. She ran her cool, silk hands down my bare arms, comforting me while effectively pinning my arms to my sides. I had a tendency to physically choke myself in my panic, for whatever fucking loony reason that was. “Quentin, hurry up!”

She’d barely got the words out of her mouth before the screen door snapped open loudly, followed by thumping footfalls crossing straight over to where we stood. My purse was yanked from my hands. I could then hear the clattering sounds of my bag being upended onto the porch and after that it was a mere few seconds before I saw Quentin’s concentrated expression come into view. I gaped at him, probably looking like a suffocating fish, before I clawed the inhaler out of his hands and—…

… _Ahhh_ …

“There we go, see Jacky? _There_ we go…” Granny smiled, her eyebrows rising as she watched my eyes flutter shut in relief. She patted my arms with audible little slaps, satisfaction coloring her sweet face. “My word, if I knew you’d be so happy to see me I would’ve been more prepared. Called the fire department, maybe?”

I felt safe enough to laugh a little at that memory: circa sophomore year of high school in nothing but my bikini, having a cute firefighter ‘revive’ me after I’d had an ‘attack’. I faked most of the dramatics that time, just to get the attention, and it’d been a running joke with Granny ever since.

“Geez, Quentin.” I panted, reaching a hand out to touch his shoulder affectionately. “Thank you. You’re a life saver.”

He blushed and nodded, fixing his hands on his hips and releasing a bellow of a breath that he didn’t seem to realize he’d been holding. He removed his thick squared glasses to rub at the sweat that gathered at the bridge of his nose. “Phew, Jack… I forgot how much of a drama queen you are.” He grinned playfully as Granny tutted in disapproval, giving him a good slap on the side of his shaved head.

“Phooey to that, Quentin. Get in that house!” Granny glared, though I could see the glimmer of good humor in her gray eyes. Quentin gave a winded laugh, shaking his head as he turned on his heel and disappeared behind the snapping screen door. “That boy…”

I sunk down carefully to the porch floor, swallowing with my throat still a bit thick, and gingerly began to pick up my assorted crap and toss it back into my purse. Blushing, I quickly slapped my hand over a pack of condoms leftover from my time with Oliver, glancing up at Granny to see if she had noticed. If she _had_ noticed she must’ve decided to spare me _that_ embarrassment, for she didn’t even blink as I Iess-than-discreetly shoved the (now useless) plastic into my coat pocket.

“I’m sorry Granny…” I muttered, slightly put-out by my lack of grace. For whatever reason, I had pictured our reunion to be more mature and collected on my part; I was an adult after all, with an actual job and taxes and the whole thing. Instead I let my excitement and a little bit of dust throw me flat on my ass. After years of asthma, you’d think I’d be used to it—the embarrassment of an attack, I mean. “I’m usually more prepared than… whatever _this_ is.”

She laughs at that, dismissing it immediately with a delicate wave of her hand. “Like I said: phooey to that! You’ve always brought exhilaration to my life, Pandora Jackson; don’t ever be ashamed of that.”

Not much else was said on the subject as we gathered up the rest of my things, supporting one another as we made the slow journey into the house. Upon stepping into the warm little home, immediately I was awarded with the best—the absolute _best_ —feature of dear Granny Hazel’s house: immaculately clean air. From the day my asthma was diagnosed, Granny made it her mission to make my life a million times easier by being an absolute clean- _freak_ —not that it was necessarily so far away from her true self, she was a house-wife through and through back in the day when those things mattered. I could even smell those old essential oils that she would break out with the insistence that ‘nothing is more soothing than French lavender’.

“Ahh…” I beamed at the space before me, warm honey spilling down my spine and pooling sweetly as _that feeling_ came over me: _this_ is what safety feels like. That nearly dead TV set that played black and white programs from a different time, the soft click of the antique grandfather clock, the sweet crooning of some schmaltzy oldies coming from her beat up old record player for background noise, the musky lavender swelling through me… everything, _all of it_ , so strictly Granny and so very nostalgic that I couldn’t help but feel a little giddy.

“Well I made sure to clean up real nice before you came.” Granny says from somewhere else in the room, I look to find her waddling over to the kitchen. She grabs a glass with shaky, small hands, leaning over the sink to fill it up with tap water. “And I know how you love my lavender. Nothing is more soothing.”

I smile quietly at that; some things just don’t change.

She hands me the glass of water and I sigh a, “Thank you Ma’am,” before taking a long draw on the metallic tasting liquid. “Eh, Granny you should really get a water purifier, it’s better for you.”

“Oh phooey to that, Jack. You’ve spent too much time in that awful Los Santos.” She scoffs, patting my butt affectionately before shuffling past me and into the sitting room. She lowers herself tentatively into her favorite leather lounge chair, the air from the cushions hissing out under her weight.

“Amen to that.” I look over at where Quentin leans his elbows on the ceramic white tile kitchen counter-top. He shrugs good-naturedly as I narrow my eyes at him, giving me a chuckle as he rubs his hand over his shaved scalp. “I never took you for an LS sort of girl, Jack. Though even so, I’m still surprised that you returned with a considerable _lack_ of plastic. As far as I can see, at least.”

“Cállate.” I curl my lip at him in mock disdain, leaning over the counter to face him with a smirk. “And here _you_ are, right where I left you.”

“Ouch.” He grins, taking a drag from his Logger. “And to think, you used to be _nice_!”

“Oh phooey, enough of that!” Granny’s little voice sounds from the sitting room. “Lilibeth, would you bring me a cream-saver from the candy pot?”

My smile falls at that, meeting Quentin’s eyes pointedly. He sighs quietly, giving me a look that seems to say: _what can you do?  
_

Lilibeth was—is—my mother’s name. Back when pop was still around, mom and Granny were very close. Mom’s family is still back in the Philippines, so Granny had been all the family mom needed all rolled up into one little busy-body of a mother-in-law. And of course, it had always helped that mom had asthma worse than my own (which was really saying something), with bi-polar disorder thrown right in. Gave Granny someone to fix, and in turn, that had prepared Granny for _my_ asthma attacks early on, had made it ‘no big thing’. But once dad split, well… mom checked out of Granny’s life in order to stay holed up at home on permanent disability leave. I didn’t dwell on it too much, made my heart ache for both women.

“ _Jack_ will get you some, Gran.” Quentin rumbles kindly, nodding over to the familiar candy pot that sat in a new spot than I remembered from my childhood. I took a moment to trace my finger over the chipped honey bee that was molded on the front of the pot, studying the faded yellow and black paint. I grab a handful of cream-savers, Granny’s favorite candy, and make my way over to her chair.

“Thanks baby.” She croaks before clearing her throat a bit weakly, smiling up at me a bit obliviously before cupping her shaking hands for the candy that I give to her. “I’m a bit tired so I’m just going to rest here and watch my program while Quentin helps you get your boxes, okay Lilibeth?”

I try not to let that hurt my feelings: Granny’s… well, she’s _forgetful_ , I’ll say that much. It started not long after my twentieth birthday when I found her wandering through a neighbor’s pig pen after she’d been gone for over an hour getting birthday candles from the store.

“Alright, Granny.” I nod, looking to Quentin as he gulps down the rest of his beer before lumbering over towards the front door. I turn to follow him, but Granny’s grip on my wrist stops me. I meet her eyes—eyes that are ashamed and more than a bit sorrowful. _Shit_ …

“Jack, I apologize.” She sighs, patting the back of my hand with her free hand as the other one gives my wrist an affectionate squeeze. “You’re not Lilibeth, I am sorry that I called you that, baby.”

I took the hand that held mine and pressed a kiss to the paper-thin skin, winking at Granny before turning away and heading out the front door.

“So…” Quentin pushes off from where he had been leaning against my car, his tattooed arms crossed over his chest. I noted silently that he was a bit doughier than the last time I saw him, perhaps even a bit more aged around the eyes and mouth. I smile at him, jamming my thumb continuously into the automatic car lock. I curse it’s ineffectiveness under my breath as Quentin waits for me to unlock the trunk, looking me up and down. “You look good, J. I’s just kidding ‘bout all that LS talk, you know?”

“ _Sure_ , Quentin.” I tease, earning a short laugh from him. “You look good too, like you’ve gained some much needed weight.”

I give him a pointed look as he nods awkwardly. He knows what I’m talking about; his past of heavy using had made him thin as a damn twig the last time I saw him. Quentin was no longer gaunt, which was a surprise, especially since hearing that he’d moved to Sandy Shores of all places. I had assumed the worst after _that_ particular news.

“You clean?” I press bluntly as I finally get the trunk yanked open. I know Quentin enough to recognize his need for someone to get on his ass about this—Granny wouldn’t take too well to her great-nephew smoking up again, hearing it the first time had nearly broken her heart.

“ _Jack_ …” He wheezes as he picks up one of my boxes, looking at me over the top of his glasses. “ _You_ are a worry-wart.”

I sniff indignantly at that, but don’t deny it. “That doesn’t answer my question, babe.”

“I’m doing fine, alright? I’ve got a—well, a _solid_ job, as far as _jobs_ go out here...” He replies vaguely, grunting as he sets the box down on the porch before returning to the car for another. His mustachioed face twists up into a smile. “Got some nice pocket change for the first time in a while, it’s helped Granny a lot, so don’t start nagging me.”

“Yikes, aren’t you the picture of mystery?” He rolls his eyes, balancing a box on his hip with one arm in order to push his slipping glasses up his face.

I squint at him as he joins me at the porch where I lean on a stack of boxes, watching him carefully for any signs of meth-use. Sheesh, _meth_ … Thought I’d escaped _that_ life when I moved to LS. That’s not to say that drugs _aren’t_ a vital part of the nervous system of that damn city—however things out here in Blaine County seemed a tad nastier when it came to crystal. At least, while growing up around here that was certainly the truth.

Granny scared me off the stuff when I was about ten, so I never took to the idea of sampling narcotics. Fear trumped curiosity in that regard. I was what most people in my family called, ‘ _one of the weak ones_ ’. Whatever the fuck that meant—I had my hang-ups but I never thought of myself as _weak_. But it was different for Quentin, who grew up amongst a part of our family that was filled with users and pushers, something that I had been sheltered from unintentionally by my father's abandonment. I’ve never forgotten those nights I’d stay up with Granny and Auntie Dot, wondering if Quentin was off ODing or cooking again or _dying_ somewhere in a ditch. That was a hard time for all of us, even mom—in her perpetual delusional state of mind—knew something was amiss when Quentin would disappear for weeks at a time. I had to believe that he wouldn’t put us through that again.

“Yeah, well, I’m a grown ass man, J!” He bays with a teasing sort of masculinity, wrenching a defeated giggle from me. Quentin winks at me, dusting his hands off as he sets another box on one of the already-made stacks. “I’ve got something going for me, so try not to worry too much, alright?”

“Alright, alright!” I hold my palms up in surrender, watching as he leans up against a porch support with a cigarette pressed between his lips. “Those kill, you know. Make your lungs shriveled and black.”

He groans in annoyance, squinting his eyes at me over the rolls of smoke that rise from the burning butt-end. “Gee, that’s scary: you sound like a friend of mine.”

I guffaw a bit at that, making sure to stay upwind of him. Cigarettes are a big asthma trigger for me. The wind is on my side though, blowing the smoke kindly away from me and off towards the sunset over the Alamo Sea in the distance. He takes a drag before glancing at me, realization passing over his face.

“Shit!” He flicks the cigarette before stomping it out quickly, looking up at me in apology. “Sorry, God—shit… I forget about all these trigger things after not seeing you for five years!”

I snort, waving it off dismissively. “Wow, five years? That’s kinda depressing, sorry Quen.”

“Eh, I don’t blame you.” He squints over at the sun, taking his glasses off to rub them clean with his t-shirt. “You got out of this place, you know? You’re doing well for yourself.”

“So are you.” I counter, swinging my legs off the porch as I settle comfortably against a few of my boxes.

“That’s different, Jack.” He rolls his neck. “I mean, yeah I’m doing good. But considering our family’s track record? Yeah… you’re on the right track, kid.”

I sigh at that, knowing that he’s probably right, but still feeling as if admitting it out loud would sound more than a bit supercilious. Truth be told, I strayed so far away from my father’s side of the family’s way of life that I actually turned out to be a bit _boring_ growing up. My fear of falling out like so many of my relatives had—whether that be to jail or drugs or _what have you_ —had been crippling and had formed a sort of anxiety in me, not to mention my asthma that governed many of my life’s actions. I suppose it was always either going to be my way or Quentin’s way—which was diving right into the life that had been carved before him. My dad had been a part of the life that Quentin lead, and thus could not handle _my_ way. He couldn’t handle mom’s mental illness either, couldn’t handle my asthma and my anxiety. He wasn’t the best guy around anyway, but you wouldn’t think it possible—having been raised by Granny.

“Well hey: at least you’ve got a truck now.” I attempted to change the subject—having always felt luckier than Quentin for having been raised primarily by Granny when all he had was his horrific side of the family. Aunt Dot gave up on him long ago, a sobering truth. “Though I’ve got to say, it looks… um, sort of…”

“Like a real hillbilly hunk of shit?” He finished for me, getting a laugh out of the both of us. “It’s not mine, actually… I borrowed it from my friend, actually.”

“Oh, well then I’m actually kind of relieved…” I snorted, looking at the general filth of the vehicle. “Nice friend, he the same one who’s smart enough to steer you off those death sticks?” I glance over at Quentin, a bit of mischief forming in my chest. “Or is this friend… a _she_?” I waggle my brows at him.

“Hah!” He barks, smirking as he glances over at the red pickup thoughtfully. “Nah, he’s a he—actually a co-worker, of sorts.”

I watch Quentin’s expression carefully, trying to dissect his vague hints towards his line of work. He obviously wasn’t going to tell me what exactly it was that he did, and I’m not sure how I felt about that. Yes, I’m being nosy, _that_ I was aware of—besides, I haven’t been a part of Quentin’s life for _five years_. For as close as we were before I moved to LS, that didn’t give me the right to show up demanding answers from him right off the bat. So I didn’t press, I just took a deep breath and blew it at a curl that was falling into my eyes stubbornly.

“Well hey, I was thinking,” I venture, joining Quentin in standing up to resume our movement of my boxes. We each grab one, him pausing to hold the screen door open with his foot as I pass by him and back into the house. “I’m starting work at the Sandy Shores clinic in two weeks, on April sixth, and that’s a… hm, lets see…”

“A Monday, Jack.” Granny pipes up from her chair in the sitting room. I smile faintly at that: she was always a champ of an eavesdropper.

“Right, a Monday.” I confirm as Quentin and I arrive in my empty bedroom—the same guest room that I used to stay in every summer. It was _spotless_ , down to the dustless lampshades and crystal clear windows—Gran was sure thorough. “Anyway, I was wondering, since you live in Sandy Shores, would you mind showing me around sometime soon?”

I pause to heave a box onto the floor, not bothering to look back at Quentin as he stutters out a very awkward: “Uhh…”

“I mean, I know Sandy Shores isn’t a metropolis of fast lights and fun sights, but,” I straighten up, sucking in a deep breath through my sore lungs and smiling easily at him. “I’d still like to get an idea of my work area, you know?”

“Oh, ah… well, PJ, I’m not sure.” He rubs the back of his head nervously. “It’s kind of a shithole of a town anyhow. You remember, right? You’ve been there before.”

“Yeah sure…” I trail off, fisting my hands on my hips as I stare at him. “But still, I’m a bit nervous about navigating around the town; you know I’m shit at directions. I’d feel safer if you were with me.”

He winces at those words, as if he really didn’t think that to be true—whether he thought _I_ was lying or that I was simply being naïve about _my safety_ with _him_ , I didn’t bother to ask. Both possibilities made me uncomfortable.

Though it doesn’t matter—the words are barely out of my mouth before Granny interjects. “You better take your cousin into town on Saturday, Quentin Adler, or so God help you!”

We both let out a quiet laugh at that, listening to Granny’s grumbles for a few moments longer before Quentin sighs. “Okay. Saturday afternoon— _late_ afternoon. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds swell.” I smirk, walking over to my purse on the bed in order to fish out my phone. I flick through it for a minute, pulling up a standard GPS app. “Tell me your address; I’ll come pick you up—,”

“No!” He blurts out, stopping me in my tracks. I look up slowly from my phone, cocking my head to the side minutely as I wait for his explanation. “No, I mean… I just would rather meet you here.”

I blink at him, letting the silence stretch out for a moment as he fidgets.

“Right…” I draw out, tapping the lock button on my phone as I toss it onto the bed. I keep my eyes fixated on him strongly, feeling that tell-tale suspicion rise up the back of my neck. _Just because he doesn’t look like he’s using doesn’t mean he’s not **cooking** again._ “Why’s that?”

“Because,” He starts, jutting his chin out defiantly. I don’t buy it and he sees that right away, because he backs down from my gaze to sigh out in a huff. “Because, Jack, I was gonna come up here to see you and Gran anyway on Saturday.” Then he pauses to look over his shoulder at the door way to my room before continuing in a more hushed tone. “I’m dropping off some money for Gran that day, alright?”

That pushes me an inch; sounds plausible and very much like _Quentin_. He may be a bit of a shit, but he takes care of his own; it’s a part of his weird code of honor that he manages to grasp onto amidst indiscretions that _hurt his own_ despite his service to them. A bit ass-backwards if you ask me, but if it’s helping Gran then I figure I can keep my mouth shut. For now.

“Come on Pandora, stop looking at me like that, please.” I snap back into the moment, realizing a couple seconds too late that in the middle of my musings I was still fixating a judgmental stare on Quentin.

“Ack, sorry.” I shake my head, as if that would clear my head, and begin to make my way back towards the front porch to retrieve the rest of my boxes. He follows closely on my heel, only backtracking as I stop abruptly and turn around to stick my finger in his face. “ _Don’t_ call me that.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He dismisses, giving me a bit of a stern look as he brushes past me.

I huff out a sigh as I watch the screen door shut behind him, staring out at the violent wine hue of the sky as the televised audience on Granny’s show begins to boo and hiss.

I hear her tsk under her breath. “Aw, phooey...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry it was so long... I have that bad habit, sometimes. :)


	3. Evidence of Inadequacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora sees a not-so-friendly face.

“Mmm… Shit these are good.” A slap collided with the back of my head, causing me to cough on the free chocolate chip cookie sample that I’d plucked up. “Um, _**ow**_ , Gran.”

A bit dramatic of me, for it wasn’t as if it actually did hurt, but there you go. Sometimes I can’t help but drag things out a bit.

“Phooey, Jack, don’t talk like that!”

I sent a pout in Granny’s direction as she sashayed passed me—as well as she could _sashay_ these days—and shot me a glare over her shoulder. Taking that look as a warning that I should quit my squirrelling around and get down to business, I sucked up the indignance of being swatted like a child in the middle of the supermarket by my nearly 90 year old grandmother.

We were here at Grapeseed’s—only—supermarket to buy Quentin a pie. Granny had insisted to me that she would’ve made it herself, had she the time and if the peaches around here were in season. She also scolded me when I asked why exactly she was buying him a pie. _Because he’s family, you silly girl, why wouldn’t you buy him a pie? Especially when he’s showing you around today! Phooey!_

I trailed behind her, matching her slow pace without any trouble, and took to sticking my nose into my purse in search of my inhaler. Once found, I gripped it between my teeth as I dove back into my bag in search of my phone. I took a deep breath with the inhaler, holding it in for a while before allowing the vapor to pass slowly through my lips. I discarded it haphazardly back into my bag, knowing that it was a bad habit of mine to do so when I usually needed to find it _ASAP_ under most circumstances. But things like that die hard, as they say, so I concentrated instead on ticking through some recent texts. One from Oliver catches my eye, causing a little flip flop in my heart. Not necessarily good—in fact, hearing from him made me more anxious than anything else. Isn’t he supposed to leave me alone, now? He quasi-broke up with me two weeks ago. What are the rules for this sort of thing?

_Hey how’s Grapeseed so far?? :)_

I bite my thumbnail, glancing up to check on Granny as she browsed through the fiber cereals. I huff out a congested breath— _damn these allergies_.

_Hey! It’s alright so far, sort of a blast from the past_.

I frowned, wondering about what else I should mention—that I was unreasonably jealous that he had moved on so quickly from our not-relationship? That I was miserably horny and didn’t even feel like I’d ever sleep with someone again because A) I moved in with my grandmother and B) I’m in _Grapeseed_ of all places.

_How are things at work_? I asked, palming my phone in my hand and glancing down nervously at it every thirty seconds until Oliver texted back three minutes later.

_I got promoted! I was in talks with my manager about it a month ago but it finally went thru last week. Yay!_

I rolled my eyes pettily, nearly bumping into Granny as she stopped walking down the aisle abruptly to grumble at the prices of pasta sauces. _So what if he got a promotion? That is a good thing, J_. True, why did I feel the need to be vindictive? It’s not like he deserved it. Except… Well—yeah, okay, so Oliver had been pretty flakey with me when we were doing the whole no-strings-attached-sex thing. To the point where I spent more than a couple nights alone, all shaved and primped up, waiting for him to text me back when he was ready for me to take a cab over to his place, only to get the inevitable ‘sorry, I’m tired’ text.

A frown screwed up my mouth as I imagined up a fake vengeful text, typing it up for kicks on my phone’s keypad: _How fun for you! Have you knocked up darling Kelly yet?_ I cringed at the idea of the alternate universe in which I would actually feel bitchy enough to send such an uncalled for text. Did he deserve it, even with all his flakiness and hang-ups thrown in? Probably not—it didn’t matter though, I wouldn’t send something so horribly embarrassing and inappropriate. Just the thought made my stomach lurch.

“Oh phooey!”

I locked my phone quickly out of reflex, stuffing it back into my pocket as I looked up at Granny. “What’s up, Gran?” I slung my arm around her shoulder lightly, jutting out my lip at the pasta sauces in front of me.

“Well, baby, I was planning on makin’ your favorite spaghetti tonight and damn them, they don’t have that silly sauce that you used to love when you was a little girl.” Granny tutted under her breath, reaching a shaky hand up to pat my arm that hung around her shoulders. “You don’t suppose they’re out?”

I shrugged. “I could ask for you.” I wouldn’t mention to her that I didn’t actually remember exactly what sauce she was referring to. Granny had a spooky memory about some things, little details that the next person might dismiss. Made her mental degradation all that much harsher—didn’t seem fair that she was forgetting the important stuff like her granddaughter’s name instead of things like her granddaughter’s favorite pasta sauce.

“Nah, Jacky. None of that.” She shook her head with her ruby red lips mashed together and beckoned me after her. “I’ll get some tomatoes and make my own, heck it.”

As we neared the produce section it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually replied to Oliver yet. I sighed, glancing at Granny before I unlocked my phone and stared at my screen. And stared… and… stared. _What_.

_uh what? NO she isn’t pregnant!! why would u say that pandora?_

“Fuck.” I sobbed quietly, hanging my head until I pressed my phone’s touch screen hard into my face. “ _ **Fuck** me_...”

“Uh, ‘scuse me?”

My head twisted up from where it was squished against my phone, meeting eyes with a rather scraggly looking fellow who, to be honest, seemed to fit like a glove with the community of Grapeseed. He was wearing a dirty white Logger beer t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, leaving jagged pieces of fabric along the hem. His pants were baggy and ripped, muddy too, hanging down enough to see his plaid boxers. I squinted rudely at him, wondering if he had actually heard what I was saying to myself—but still, I could admit that something about him was familiar: I’d seen him before.

“Hello?” I replied awkwardly, baring my teeth in what I hoped looked like a smile. My voice had drawn the attention of Gran, who in turn looked over to the man who was now looking me up and down in queer sort of way, as if he were embarrassed for me.

“Hmph. Elwood O’Neil.” Granny narrowed her eyes at the man and leaned her elbow on the shopping cart in her appraisal of him— her hostile attitude shocked me initially, but as his name repeated in my head in my attempts to place him, this all suddenly made sense.

The O’Neil’s and the Jackson’s weren’t exactly on the friendliest terms. Back when Grandma Hazel was first dating my grandfather, the O’Neil boys had made a big stink about a white woman going steady with a black man. It never escalated beyond a few racist remarks, testosterone filled stand-offs, and perhaps a couple of rocks thrown through windows. Still, Gran never forgave the men who she insists caused Grandpa’s premature death. The whole story had never been made clear to us kids because shit, who wants to pester their grandma about how her husband had been killed—or murdered, as she put it. All we knew was that something went down with grandpa and the O’Neil’s that ultimately ended in his death just three years after the birth of his last child.

“Mrs. Jackson.” He greeted, his face scrunched up a bit like a rat, and nodded his head in her direction. _Gee, that’s a thick accent_. He turned to me, showing slightly yellowed teeth with what must’ve been a smirk. “Hey there Pandora—or, sorry, _Jack_ right?”

“Yup.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping that this shithead didn’t think the uncomfortable flush on my face was due to him.

“Yeah, I figured it was you.” He drawled, tonguing a jagged canine. “You’s went to high school with a couple of my brothers.”

_Oh dear God, **did I**_? I grimaced at that thought, not bothering to save face for it—he had already seen the expression anyway and had soured up pretty quick from my reaction.

“Well ain’t that unfortunate?” Granny pipes up, sticking her nose up at the man as he turns his scowl on her. “If you’ll excuse us, boy, we got some shoppin’ to do. Can’t afford no distractions presently.”

“Wouldn’t dream it, _Mrs_. Jackson. I’s just tryin’ to be friendly. Saw a couple of old family friends and thought I’d say hello.” He snickered, holding his hands up in defense, and gave me another once over. “Say hello to your boy Chef for me, eh _Jack_?”

“Wait, what?” My heart leapt painfully at that, stepping out from beside Gran to catch Elwood’s attention as he turned to leave. “Wh-who… what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh _shit_ ,” He draws out the word, catching on to the way Granny’s eyes thin further at the curse word. “I ‘spose I should say _Quentin Adler_ , eh? He’s your cousin, ain’t he?”

A cold tingle raced up and down my spine at those words, very ominous despite his ridiculous accent. Elwood tips his head in mocking politeness at the two of us before turning back down the aisle, disappearing with a jug of drain cleaner in each hand.

“What an unpleasant little cuss.” Granny spits and looks up at me sternly as she forces our squeaky shopping cart into submission. “Ain’t he just dirty as all heck? Phooey, what disrespect—how very typical of an _O’Neil_.”

“Gran,” I frown and looked down at my hands as we begin to walk towards the check-out. “What do you suppose he meant by calling Quentin, ‘Chef’?”

“Eh? Oh, Phooey to that, Jacky!” She hisses, looking around as if to make sure no one was listening. “You don’t listen to that boy, baby! He’s probably just bringing up some sore topics, you see?” I could have pushed it, could’ve been bossy and nosy and tried to pry a bit more—in fact, I had my mouth open and ready for it, but then I caught a glance of Granny’s face: weary, suspicious, and more than a bit sad. _So then, she must suspect something to_.

So instead I just nodded and shut up fast, unloading the groceries onto the belt before leaning back against the magazine stand to cautiously check my phone. Looking at the screen I sighed, staring hard at the proof of my inadequacy in my hands.

_uh what? NO she isn’t pregnant!! why would u say that pandora?_

_Cvfgbbgvfcfvgjhg.,.fm,fdonnnnnnnnnnnnn_

_what r u doing? This isnt like u_

A few touches of the screen and Oliver is erased from my contacts, along with my last shred of pride. _Well, Oliver, **this** is how Pandora Jackson gets the last word. **Awkwardly**._

 

* * *

 

 

The walk home from the supermarket with Granny wasn’t far, but it _was_ long. An eighty-six year old and an asthmatic twenty-four year old don’t exactly make record time in making a typically six minute walk from the local market to the Jackson home, which was literally down the street from one another. I couldn’t take all the blame—I wasn’t _completely_ debilitated by my disease, unlike my mother. Though, it might also be because I didn’t exactly go nuts on the whole ‘health craze’ going on back in LS. In fact, I was only at a low weight class due to my lack of proper funds to purchase food back when rent was horse-shit-high in the city. I’d already gained two pounds under Gran’s supervision, anyway, a fact that I hadn’t decided to like or dislike quite yet.

To my left, Gran takes in a deep breath, letting it out with a satisfied, “ _Ahhh_ …”

I decide to do the same and am rewarded nicely. The clean ocean air of the Alamo Sea always did wonders for my lungs as a kid—I wondered if perhaps that was why my attacks had increased in severity and frequency after moving to the smog-belching factory known as Los Santos. The loss of ocean air must’ve been a shock to my body, especially when replaced by the harsh and very unforgiving air of the city—a thought that oddly made me feel a bit sad.

“Feeling good, Granny?” I look to her, taking in her pleasant smile and finding one of my own. Fuck that O’Neil guy, planting that suspicion in my head… the nerve, bringing up Quentin’s past like that. If I were some sort of crazy person, I might’ve knocked his lights out—though now, thinking back, that was what I _wished_ I would have done. Only, I can’t imagine myself being that physically impulsive—verbally impulsive was a different story, of course. _That_ I had down to pat.

“Oh, Jack, you know it’s this ocean air that I _love_.” She sighs, shielding her eyes from the sun as we walk up towards the Jackson house. I watch as her smile widens across her face soon before she reaches a free hand up to wave off into the distance. “Hey Quentin, baby! You ain’t been waiting long?”

I squint through the high cast sun, spotting Quentin’s black squared glasses and the shining glint of the plastic lenses in the sunshine. Despite that sudden niggling feeling in the back of my brain that warns of trouble, I smile brightly at him, watching as he flicks out a cigarette and hops off the hood of a… black pickup, shiny, and looking to be a recent year model.

_Shit._

Maybe this doesn’t _mean anything_ though. What if _this is_ Quentin’s truck? Perhaps when I saw him last Sunday he had the thing in the shop or maybe someone had borrowed it? There _was_ an explanation for this, for why one day Quentin doesn’t have a truck and a week later he has a brand new truck. Despite my attempts to reassure myself, my stomach still draws sharply into a knot as we get closer to the front gate. Granny doesn’t remark upon the new truck, instead shuffling over to Quentin to pull him down for a kiss on each cheek. I keep my eyes on the truck as I walk passed the two of them, nudging the broken latch on the fence open and stepping around the cooing hens that gather around my feet.

_Damn you Quentin, this better not be what it looks like, you shit!_

I hold the gate open for Granny as she pulls her house key from her purse, waiting for Quentin to join me. Quentin jogs over, scooping a couple grocery bags from my grasp and smiling easily at me with sun-burnt cheeks.

“Hey there, Jack.” He greets, pausing to let me adjust my grip on the remaining groceries bags. They are heavy, the plastic handles cutting my fingers into puffy little sausage links as I heft them in my hands.

There is a part of me, a very sensible and possibly a much kinder part of me, that knows I shouldn’t mention my encounter with Elwood O’Neil to Quentin—whatever he’s done with his life, he seems to be relatively happy now, and god knows that whatever money he is raking in is helping Gran get along. But then there’s that _other_ part of me, the part that won’t take _that_ excuse lying down. I didn’t stand around to let Quentin pull this cooking shit in the past, so why should I let it slide now if I was at all suspicious? He’s my cousin, the only family member I have a close relationship with besides Granny—I wouldn’t let my penchant for avoiding confrontation cause a shit-storm in our lives all over again.

So, I suck in a deep breath, jut out my chin and squint my eyes in accusation up at Quentin and say casually, “Hey there _Chef_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, this is way too much fun to write!


	4. Despise Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack tries to confront Quentin. Somebody interrupts that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, sorry! Hopefully _someone_ will make it worth the read. ;)

The ride to Sandy Shores was looking to be a quiet one. I managed to make frequent discreet glances over at Quentin during the first few minutes of riding with him in the truck with no immediate consequences. I look now at the way his knuckles whiten from his grip on the steering wheel. His eyes are set adamantly forward, staring almost angrily at the lines on the road. I sigh, propping my bare feet up on the dashboard and leaning my forehead up against the passenger side window. The Alamo Sea is almost blinding, the sun bearing down violently on its soft swells, sending glittering shards of light reflecting onto the passing cars. The unfortunate part of this sort of weather was that this probably wouldn’t even be the hottest day of the year, not by a long shot. It wasn’t even _April_ yet. I risk the backlash and pipe up innocently. “It’s hot as fuck outside.”

Stealing a glance at Quentin reveals the tightening of his jaw and the wringing of his hands on the steering wheel. Okay, so he’s mad at me—or at least uncomfortable, it’s really hard to tell with him, always has been. I decide in a snap decision to press the issue in order to avoid allowing it to stew.

“Where’d you get this truck?” I mumble, looking out onto the road ahead of us even as he moves to look over at me for the first time the entire drive.

He huffs loudly through his nose, continuing to twist his hands along the steering wheel irritably. “What the _fuck_ , Jack?”

“What?” I counter shrilly, holding my hands out in question as he shakes his head. I swallow, collecting myself for a moment, before I continue on in a calmer tone. “It’s a simple question, Quentin. Don’t bullshit me; I don’t care what ‘job’ you have, it’d take some textbook credit and some major fucking cash to pick up a _current year Bison_.”

“So?” He replies, running his hands over his head as he steers with his knee. Quentin sighs, looking over at my expectant expression. “What do you want me to say, J?”

“Whatever is true.” I say, letting my feet slide off the dash in order to fold my legs underneath me. “What, you don’t trust me or something? Just because I’m not… _in_ the life doesn’t mean I’d ever rat on you.”

He frowns, looking away from me in favor of the road as we roll up to a stop sign. Unsatisfied with his reaction I reach over and give his shoulder a little bit of a shake, waiting until he finally met my eyes again. “Never, Quentin. I would _never_.”

Quentin lets out a bellow of air and he nods to himself assuredly—as if I was confirming a truth that he suspected prior. “Okay. Okay, I know that, really I do. I know you’re good for your word.”

“But you don’t trust me? Is that it?” Shit, even _saying_ that hurt. 

I look out the window as Quentin pulls over to the side of the road. We’ve rolled up next to what I presume used to be a motel, though now it is decrepit and miserable and seeming to wheeze and slouch under the desert sun. A few curious coyotes yip as they flee from the dust cloud conjured by this obnoxious truck. I look briefly at the rabbit carcass they had been picking at, a bit surprised at the speed with which circling buzzards descend upon the free meal.

“Jack, look at me.”

For whatever reason I felt the tickle of tears at the edge of my eyes, causing me to swallow hard a couple of times as my face contorted with the struggle of trying not to let them fall. I have always been a crier, always emotional as all hell. It was something that had always made me easy to read and sometimes I hated that—though in moments like this, I felt maybe that it wasn’t such a bad trait. So I did look over at Quentin, my eyes hot with tears that had refused to fall, and met his gaze steadily.

“I trust you.” He says quietly, reaching a hand over to grab my knee and give it a squeeze. “I’ll always trust _you_ , Jack. You _and_ Hazel, you were there for me—there when…” He struggles. “There when my mom didn’t want to deal anymore. And I want you to know that I will _never_ forget that.”

I press my lips to my teeth and roll them almost hard enough to draw blood as I nod quickly and hard, giving him a weak smile as he breathes out a humorless laugh. “You’re scaring me, Quentin.”

“Yeah…” He sighs heavily, patting my knee once before he releases it in favor of the steering wheel. “Yeah, I know that J. And I’m sorry for that.”

He pulls back onto the road again, rubbing at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his arm. He drives as if we have no destination, though that would be fine with me. I’m not sure if I feel all that much like sight-seeing; no, I have far too many questions buzzing on the tip of my tongue. I stick my feet back up on the dash, having long since discarded my sandals. I stare at my red toe-nails as I contemplate a couple of questions when suddenly Quentin clears his throat. 

“Let’s just say… well, I had _help_ getting this truck.” He says. I can see him glance over at me when I don’t respond but I keep my face resentfully stony in response to his search for understanding. He grunts a bit irritably at my lack of reply. “I know you, Jack—I know what you’re thinking. You just… Well, sometimes I don’t think you understand what my life is like!”

That gets my attention. I snap my head in his direction, like always I’m angry a bit too fast and I let my mouth hang open as I watch him try to backtrack. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?” I snarl, my feet sliding with a loud squeak off the dash before they thump audibly onto the car floor. 

“Jack, calm down.” Quentin’s trying to equally balance his attention between me and the road, slamming a bit too hard on the brakes at the last minute at a stop sign. “Okay, okay. Shit, hold on, let me pull in here.”

I sniff and wipe angrily at a single tear that has escaped, hugging my knees to my chest as we pull into the parking lot of the Yellow Jack Inn. _Shit, **this** place_? Quentin takes a deep breath as he pulls into a parking space, leaving the engine rumbling in favor of the blasting AC. He turns to me, frowning at the sight of my expression.

“Geez, Jack, don’t look so heartbroken. I—I didn’t…” He pauses, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Listen, I didn’t mean that in the way I’m sure you’re imagining. I guess that sometimes I just get a bit… frustrated with you, with how _offended_ you are with what I do— _used_ to do, I mean. I don’t think you see _my_ side of things.”

“Oh yeah?” My voice is muffled by the material of my capris. “God, I can’t argue with that, you know that, Quentin. Anything I say will sound _pretentious_.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, making a sting of irritation flare up self-consciously in my chest. 

I turn to him, leaning my elbow on the back of the seat in order to push myself close to his face. His eyes are darting between my own quickly, as if he’s waiting for an explosion. I recognize his unease, I understand it and know that it’s not unfounded; I know what his expectations of me are. Before I moved to LS I had… a _bad_ temper that was rooted in my habit of wearing my heart on my sleeve in all things. I have always assumed that my temper was some sort of twisted way that the universe was trying to make up for my lack of any other destructive behaviors. Staying out of trouble was easier for me growing up than keeping my emotions in check. Quentin has witnessed the worst of me in my younger days—the social anxiety, the ups and downs with my happiness, the extreme sensitivity to Quentin’s criminal background, the _fear_ —and I’ve always thought that that was what connected us so closely. In fact, the last time I saw him—when he was deep in shit with crystal—I lost my shit with him over his poor health before moving to LS and barely speaking to him for five years, all but vocally giving up on trying to help him. We had made up over the phone, sure, but the image of our last argument, our last huge argument… Well, I can understand his caution now. 

Even so, I glare hard at him, pointing a rigid finger in his face. I can see my eyes flashing intensely in the reflection of his glasses. “You screwed me and Gran over in the past, Quentin. You don’t know the shit that you put us through and if you did I don’t think you’d be here pissing around all over again.” He swallows thickly, glancing away from me. 

“This might sound conceited to you, but yeah: I’m proud of myself for not following in our family’s footsteps. ‘Cause guess what Quentin? It would’ve been real easy for me to get into the thick of it right along with you; dad was right there ready to show me the ropes. You had that moment too, babe, I know you did, when you could’ve walked away and tried something new, but you stuck to the old routine.” I take a deep breath, feeling my chest tighten up as a few more tears fall. I will _not_ have an attack, _not now_. “I mean I—well, I love you, alright? Shit. But—but I can’t be like Gran, I can’t let it slide. I really just… _can’t_. ”

Quentin meets my gaze at that, looking hurt and confused by my words as he sinks back into his seat. He stares forward then, his face suddenly looking exhausted. “You _do_ sound pretentious, Jack.”

I throw my hands up, sighing in disgust as I too fall back in my seat with a thud. My face twists into an ugly frown as I cross my arms over my chest, looking at my reflection in the side mirror. _Am I pretentious_? “Sure, I _bet_. Trying to justify myself to a criminal is really fucking stupid anyway.” I grumble, catching the way he glares at me from the corner of my eye. 

“Don’t label me, Pandora.” He warns, wrenching the keys out of the ignition and slamming the car door shut behind his fleeing back, hard enough to rock me in my seat. 

I sit there for a moment in the sudden thick quiet of the truck, looking up at the rearview mirror to watch Quentin walking angrily towards the Yellow Jack Inn before he disappears inside. Very suddenly I experience the overwhelming feeling of guilt wash over me—I try to play the conversation back in my head, attempting to hear my words. _Did I really call him a criminal_?

Sighing, I roughly slap the visor down from the roof and stare hard into my reflection. My pupils are dilated, making my dark grey eyes appear nearly black. There are faint smudges of my mascara on my bottom lids and I grumble at that, wiping at them with my fingers until my eyes feel a little sore from the attention.

I had to admit that I _meant_ what I said to Quentin, but that did nothing to stamp down this horribly embarrassed feeling that I have in my chest. Was it because it’d been years since I’d actually told someone off like that? In LS I had ‘friends’, sure, but those relationships were never any deeper than a few day-dates and a laugh over gossip. We didn’t talk about family, about fears, about our dreams, it was always: _can you believe she’s pregnant? Can you believe he’s actually marrying her? Can you believe the gas prices?_ Useless shit, stuff that kept me on auto-pilot. _That_ worked for me, it distracted me from thinking about Quentin’s gaunt body riddled with track marks or from thinking about my mom hiding in her house in the hills, watching TV all day with her four dogs whining at her to just _give a shit for once_. Shit, that’s why I left mom’s house in the first place, to get away from the constant need to play care-taker for my family—I was sick of _caring_ , sick of _worrying_. I needed to be numb for once in my life.

Now I’m barely back in Blaine County for more than a week and I’m already slumming back dangerously close to my old self: emotional, scared, and worrying about things that are none of my business. Sure, in LS I was a bit of a baby too, but when I was there real problems just didn’t exist. It wasn’t: _where’s Quentin, we haven’t heard from him in two weeks? Where is mom’s medication, she’s lapsing_. It was: _should I have Chinese take-out or Mexican take-out_? At the time, being in LS had been comfortable and easy and cathartically numbing. I had escaped from this weird little world that revolved around my bizarre family. Being back out here, now and in the moment, I feel more tangible, like I can _breathe_ like a real fucking person. While that’s strangely invigorating, being back in this reality comes with its hurts—i.e. Quentin and his penchant for trouble. 

I feel like I’m in danger here, being back home—but on a whole other level than Gran and Quentin; I’m falling back into a ghost of myself that I had been trying to _get rid of_ in LS. I don’t like _that_ Jack, the old Blaine County Jack—I like the simple, even-tempered, Chinese take-out Los Santos Jack. 

“Crap.” I whined through my racing thoughts, slapping my hands over my eyes and letting my head thump back against the head rest of my seat. _I need to go in and talk to Quentin_.

And I was about to, really, until I heard the loud screech of tires sound to my left and turned to look over in surprise just in time to see a familiar shitty red truck lurch to a stop in a parking spot a few spaces down from me. I squint at the peculiar picture before me, cocking my head to the side slightly as I watch the driver of the red truck banging his head violently along with the loud thrash-music that I can hear—and feel —all the way from here. “What the…” I whisper, slowly sinking down in my seat to avoid discovery, as per old introverted habits. 

It doesn’t matter though, for the man is in his own world, banging his fist on his car horn like a drum along with the beat of the music that trembles the ground with its volume. A movement behind me catches my attention through the rearview mirror and I peak over the seats to watch as Quentin bursts out of the Yellow Jack Inn with his phone in hand. He freezes at the sight before him, eyes moving between the red truck and the truck that I’m in, and he looks like he’s been punched in the gut. The sudden silence that envelopes me draws my attention back over to the man in the red truck, who is now jumping out of his vehicle after climbing up the frame of it like a jungle gym and landing inelegantly on the pavement beside the driver’s side door. 

“ _Chef_!” I hear the red-truck man yell, voice like gravel and smoke. He is grinning with wild abandon and I can see a glint of something frenzied in his eyes from here, like he’s just about to burst with some sort of terrifying blaze of energy. _Whoa_. “That was quick! Now, you see, _that_ is what I call a fucking A-plus employee!”

_Employee_ … I mull that over in my head, narrowing my eyes at the two men as they meet in the middle of the parking lot. Red-truck man claps Quentin on the back with a laugh, his grin remaining dazzling in its feral vigor. 

“Uh, hey there, Trevor.” I can barely hear them now, but I can sure as hell see Quentin trying to look for me through the tinted windows of the truck. “I _just_ saw your text, I’m sorry man but I’m busy—,”

_That’s enough_. I try to twist out of my seat and forget that I’m still strapped in by the seatbelt, growling and kicking the dashboard in irritation as I jam my thumb into the buckle and push the car door open. 

“Hey, Jack, nu-uh _stay_ in the car!” I hear Quentin call to me but I’m already rounding the corner of the truck bed and am making a beeline to the two men. 

“Whoa, whoa, _whoa_!” I hear the red-truck man—apparently named Trevor—bark out angrily at the sight of my approach. He points to me incredulously, leaning back a bit dramatically. “Chef, what the _fuck_ is _this_? Did I say this party was a plus one fucking affair?” 

“Nah, Trevor, hold up! Wait, _look_ man—this is my _cousin_.” Quentin holds his hands up in caution, fixing this Trevor guy with a stern look. “I’m just showin’ her around Sandy Shores, man, nothin’ else. That’s what I was doing when you texted me and I didn’t see it until _just now_. Alright, man?”

_Man, Quentin’s talking to this guy like he’s trying to talk him off a ledge._

Trevor’s mouth is open as he processes this information and I can see his tongue working at the inside of his cheek. He begins to nod slowly, squinting as he stares at me. “ _Hmm_ … Your cousin, eh?”

“Yeah, Trevor, my cousin.” Chef soothes, taking a discreet step closer to me. “She just moved back to Blaine County from LS, she’s the one I mentioned, remember? Taking care of my Gran.”

“Huh, _cousin_. Hmm, yeah… I remember that...” Trevor growls mildly with an exhale of breath as he continues to look me up and down, nodding continuously and seeming to be coming to terms with my presence. “She’s a little _senorita_ , hm? How’s that? You’re whiter than my ass, Chef.”

I cock an eyebrow at that, though honestly I’m used to the uneducated guesses at my ethnicity. I ignore it, instead staring pointedly at Quentin as he begins to appear agitated. “No, T, she’s um… not Mexican. Anyway, she’s my second cousin, so…” Quentin shakes his head dismissively, rolling his eyes as he holds a hand out to gesture to Trevor—who has an off-putting looking grin stretching slowly across his harshly-lined face. “Whatever. Jack, this is my… um—well this is Trev—,”

“His boss, CEO, and president of TPI—that’s Trevor Philips _Industries_.” Trevor interjects garishly, never taking his eyes off of me—eyes that are an unnerving yellow and crackling with heat. He holds out a hand, presumably for a handshake. “I’m the man himself, in the fucking flesh! Though it’s just Trevor to _you_ , hmm sweetheart?”

I take his hand without a second thought, reminding myself that I don’t have a beef with this peculiar man and I don’t know the first thing about him—despite what his appearance suggests to me. He looks older than Quentin and much older than me, with a general dishevelment about him that screams ‘I don’t give a _fuck_ ’. I’ve seen a lot of _that_ in LS, but most of it is manufactured—fake and forced as all hell. What I have in front of me is a man who truly seems to be in another world. I smirk a bit at that thought, admiring it a bit, and shake his hand. “Nice to meet you, I’m Jack.”

Trevor barks out a loud ‘HAH!’—his head thrown back merrily—and continues to shake my hand vigorously for a bit longer than normal as he cocks his head to the side to stare at me. “Your name _isn’t **Jack**_.” 

I narrow my eyes at him, my shoulder jostling from his continuous shaking of my hand, and I pout my lip out a tad in irritation. Quentin’s eyes flick cautiously between the two of us, as if expecting to witness a murder unfold before him. 

“Says who?” I reply easily, noting that Trevor and I have suddenly stopped shaking hands and now are simply gripping each other’s hand in some sort of awkward stand-off. 

“Says fucking _me_ , sweetheart!” Trevor bellows, rewarding me with a smile that is perhaps too toothy to be entirely innocent. _He has sharp canines_. “No god damn _way_ is your name _Jack_.” His face scrunches up heavily in disgust at my name. “No, no, no, no— _you_ have some dopey fuckin’ name that your parents gave to you with the purpose of making you more _unique_ than _all_ the other girls. So let’s have it sweetcakes, what’s the real deal? Hm?”

I find myself infuriatingly disarmed by this man’s ludicrous presence, despite the fact that he’s treading on ultra-sensitive ground. It’s very apparent to me, in fact, that I should be telling this smelly, filthy man to piss off about my real name so that I can talk to my cousin properly. It also occurs to me that if this man is Quentin’s boss, then that probably means that he is a criminal as well. I’m not scared of that though, I grew up around men like this at every corner, and honestly it only serves to make me more concerned for my cousin.

“My name is Pandora Jackson.” I answer slowly, noting that my hand is sweating and that Trevor’s is hot as all hell and rough to the touch with scars and callouses.

“ _Yessss_! Oh sweet mother of god, _I love it_ …” Trevor wheezes, clutching his chest with his free hand as if the wind had been knocked out of him. “I fuckin’ _called_ it. Kooky as fuck, that is— _Pandora_ Jackson… Jesus fucking Christ, sweetheart, that’s quite the title you’ve got there.”

“ _Thanks_.” I feel my lip curl a bit in malice, wrenching my hand from his death grip before wiping my sweaty hand on my capris. He continues to laugh a bit, running his tongue over his teeth as he soaks up my butt-hurt reaction. I turn to Quentin. “Hey, I need to talk to you.” Quentin’s mouth turns down at the corner, looking extremely uncomfortable as he glances between Trevor and me, and he swallows. 

“ _Whoa_ , hey, hey!” Trevor waves his hands obnoxiously in front of me, crouching at the knees with wild eyes. “Sorry there, _Jack_ , but I do believe _I’ve_ paid for Chef’s services this evening. You don’t want to fuck up the economy of Trevor Philips Industries, sugar, do you?”

I flick my eyes over to meet Trevor’s gaze, finding it very abruptly and disturbingly humorless. _Uh_ … “Because that’d be really fuckin’ _rude_ of you, _Pandora_. Yeah?” His voice is pure gravel in the way it grates. “We just met, you know? I don’t really think you want to be _rude_ this early on in our friendship. Hm? Do you?”

“Hey, Trevor, man—,” Quentin warns, but I take a step forward until I have to lean my head back to look up into Trevor’s eyes.

“He’s _my_ cousin, _Trevor_. I think it’s pretty fucking _rude_ of _you_ to assume control over him, even as his boss, when he’s showing his family around town.” I warn calmly, feeling a bloom of fear at the sight of Trevor’s rapidly darkening expression. “So you can either piss off to finish business for another day or you can chill the hell out and let me buy you a beer!”

There is a tense silence for a few seconds and I can see Quentin wincing heavily at my words from my peripheral vision, but I don’t bother to meet his eyes. I’m caught up in Trevor, observing the waves of minute facial tics that accompany the plethora of emotions he seems to be attempting to handpick from. He purses his lips slightly before chewing a bit on his tongue as his eyes dart rapidly between my own—he’s high, that much I’m a fucking veteran at spotting. “ _ **Orrr**_ …” He drawls out roughly, quietly, and pauses as he seems to piece together his reply carefully. “Chef can go do his fucking job and _you_ —… _you_ can buy me a beer _anyway_.” 

I can feel my eyebrow twitch a bit in surprise, my head leaning a bit to the side in my observation of the lupine grin that suddenly shines cheerfully on Trevor’s face. _Is he fucking with me_? My mouth forms a mute ‘w’ as a broken ‘ _what_?’ fails to come forth, instead staring at the man before me with my eyes narrowed and my head further cocking to the side in question. 

“Uhh… No.” Quentin steps in, literally—he now puts a hand on both Trevor and my shoulder—and chuckles. “T, maybe I ought to be there with the both of you.”

“Nah, Quen.” I shake my head, taking my eyes from Trevor’s for the first time to look to Quentin a bit spitefully. “Why don’t you go do your _job_ , hm? Trevor will show me around, won’t you, _T_?” I’ve got acid on my tongue and Trevor feels it, his teeth flashing in warning at me even as he nods with a wild glint in his eye. 

“Abso-fuckin’-lutely, Pandora. I’d _loooooove_ to.”

“I don’t think so, Jack.” Quentin speaks up again, this time more firmly, and his chest puffs up a little bit in defiance. “Why don’t I go drop you off at Gran’s house and then I’ll show you around tomorrow, hm?”

“I don’t want to go tomorrow, I want to go _now_.” I reply quickly, daring Quentin with a glare. “You’ve got work to do; I’m not going to interfere with that if it’s so important.”

“Hmm, that’s smart of you, sugar.” Trevor rumbles low in his chest, his eyes darting about my face as he gives Quentin a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Any family of Chef’s is family of mine, right? Yeah, that’s right, not to worry…” Trevor turns away from me now, fixing Quentin with a broad smile as he grabs his shoulders and gives him a good-natured shake. “Why don’t you head off to the _office_ , eh bud? I’ll take darling Pandora Jackson home after she buys me a couple beers and _all_ will be well. Who knows, maybe we’ll become fast friends, huh? Hmm… _I_ hope so.”

Quentin looks like he might object once more but he’s interrupted by Trevor, who pushes him a bit roughly towards the big black truck behind us. I frown a bit at that, having never seen Quentin let someone manhandle him so bluntly before— _he isn’t afraid, I can tell, so why is he letting it happen_? “GO ON!!” Trevor thunders abruptly, crouching down like a predator and flashing his teeth at Quentin’s sullen expression. “Get the FUCK OUT of here, Cheffy-poo!”

I cock my hip and cross my arms heavily over my chest, aware that I look a tad petulant, and thin my eyes at Quentin as he looks back at me from his driver’s side window. _We’ll talk about this later_ , I try to convey to him, and he seems to get that loud and clear. He nods and nearly peals out of the lot, the engine rumbling loudly and almost angrily. 

“ _Mmm_ …” I hear a rumbling growl behind my shoulder, followed by a deep sniff that seems to strain Trevor’s nostrils from the force of it. I shift my head marginally to the source of the sound, catching sight of Trevor out of the corner of my eye. “So, _Pandora_ , since I’m… well, _technically_ your cousin for the night…”

I wait, listening as the air shifts behind my back. He’s closer now, his breath hot on my shoulder as another of his savage growls reverberates deeply in his chest. “How do you feel about incest, hmm?”

I turn around abruptly, quick enough to startle him a step back from me to avoid getting knocked by my shoulder, and glare intensely up into his eyes. He loves this, I can tell by the way his breath comes a little faster as he waits to see what I’ll do or say. The majority of me wants to slap away the boyish merriment that glows on his face, but the other little, tiny, _miniscule_ part of me feels a small giggle boil up in the back of my throat. He sees this, the awkward way I try to suppress my laugh in favor of being pissed, and shows me those dangerous looking teeth again.

“Don’t,” I hiss quietly before taking a deep, steadying breath, poking my finger into his chest all the while. “ _fucking_ call me Pandora. I hate that and it’s disrespectful.” He watches me, eyes alight with the setting sun, and waits for me to continue. “Call me that again and I’ll start to hate _you_. Do you want that, Trevor?”

“Yes.” He breathes, slowly holding his palms up in surrender. “All I ask is that you _despise_ me, sweetheart. _Pretty please_.” 

I take that moment of his rare calm to observe him further. He is a mess, that’s for god damn sure. Trevor’s face is marred by a few scars and marked by heavy lines of age and toil, but under that I can see what must’ve been a charming sort of rambunctious man, fifteen years ago maybe. I can _smell_ him from here, dirty and unwashed, and can see various stains on his army green ‘Zancudo’ shirt and black cargo pants. He’s tall, standing several inches above me, and he looks well-built despite his over-all drugged out appearance. _Like a feral dog_ —that’s what I think of when I see him, a comparison that is intensified by his wild, bright eyes that shine with a predatory edge. 

“Good.” I smile without humor, pushing my finger into his chest once more before I rock back a step from him. “You’re on the right track, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there he is!! Thanks for reading <3 And thank you a million to all the readers, those who give kudos, and my very first commenter. It makes this so fun and such a happy experience to write for all of you! Lots of love! :)


	5. Fake and Scary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Trevor have a rough start.

“God you’re _nauseating_ , you know that?”

I roll my eyes slowly until they land with flinty impatience on Trevor’s frown. He looks at me like I’m some creepy little worm that he happened upon, wiggling and wet and cold.

“Am I?” I ask, a bit tiredly, and lean my face in the cradle of my hand to face him without having to hold my head up. “Am I _really_?”

“Absolutely, god, _yuck_!” He nearly spits, scrunching up his nose and shaking his head violently. “I can’t believe you’re drinking _juice_ right now. CHRIST! If you haven’t _noticed_ , sweetheart, we’re in an honest-to-goodness _bar_ , _you_ are free of old Grandmamma for the night, and the best you can do for me is fuckin’ _apple juice_?”

“I don’t like to drink.” I reply, keeping my expression neutral despite his flamboyance. “What, just because you do that makes me wrong? Bullshit.”

“Mmm…” He growls, practically jumping out of his skin as he stares hard at me. Trevor slams his beer bottle on the counter loudly before shoving the neck of it into his mouth, sucking down his beer in a continuous draw until its empty. I wince in distaste, playing with my straw as I observe. He smacks his lips in satisfaction when he finishes the beer, flicking the empty bottle away from him with his fingers, a high ‘ _dink_ ’ sounding from the contact. “You’re a piece of work, that’s what’s bullshit here. _You_ said we were going to have _fun_ , Jack-off, huh? What’s this, then?”

“Ah-ah!” I interject quickly, holding up a finger; he focuses on it with nearly vacant eyes, his mouth hanging open—he looks quite dumb, a fact I know to be untrue. I can see the unnerving intelligence working like clockwork behind his bright eyes. “I didn’t say we’d have _fun_. In fact, all I said was that I’d buy you a beer so that you would chill the hell out.” I hold out my arms to the near empty bar, some soft country music drawling in the background the only discernible liveliness other than the group of dart players in the back of the bar. “Here we are, babe. _I_ bought you a beer and you haven’t held up _your_ part of the agreement.”

He watches with that same near-vacant expression, as if he is dumbfounded as I suck my straw into my mouth and work on my apple juice with a mocking twinkle in my eye.

“This _is_ me _chilling_ out.” He grinds out, suddenly very close to my face. “You wanna see me go fuckin’ crazy, sweetheart? Because I’ll _**show you**_.”

I grin at him despite the slight niggling of fear that I feel, reaching a hand over and patting his arm that leans on the bar counter. “That’s really okay. I don’t think I can handle it.”

“Hm, yeah... _Yeah_ , you bet your sweet ass you can’t.” He rumbles irritably, licking his lips as he glances down at my hand on his arm. I feel the muscles flexing underneath my fingers, though somehow I feel like he isn’t doing it to impress—part of me has the feeling this man is just constantly _on_. “Heh… yup, you are _sooooo_ typical, Jack-off. _So fucking typical_.”

I withdraw my hand, my brows drawing together as I try to find the meaning behind that remark. “Typical of what, Trevor?”

“You’ve got LS written _all_ over you, that’s what’s _typical_.” He seethes, his knee bouncing wildly from where his foot is propped up on the bar-stool’s metal rung. “The _clothes_ , the—the _tan_ , the _attitude_ , the fuckin’… _apple juice_. Jesus… Wh-What, are you on some kind of juice cleanse or some such shit? Why don’t you drink booze, hm? Why, are you _above_ that? You in rehab?”

I wince a bit, looking down at my clothes. They look normal to me—is it perhaps the cleanliness that is so foreign? Most likely, I’ve already started wheezing from the dust and grime that clings to his clothes, but I won’t mention that. He’s already offended enough by my choice of _beverage_.

“You know, you’re a real judgmental person.” I remark, swiveling my stool away from facing him in favor of leaning forward over my drink. “You don’t know the first thing about me, but you’re assuming I’m a certain way because of the way I look and the juice I drink.”

He scowls, leaning forward heavily on the bar top in order to get a better look at my face. “I’m right though, aren’t I? Come _onnn_ , tell me, I’ve already got a semi: you’re an LS slave, aren’t you? Let me guess… You camp out for weeks to get the new iFruit? Do you go to the Bean Machine five times a day, too? Is your ass fake with fresh silicone? Huh?”

“Do you murder children for fun? Do you go weeks without showering? Do you have a creepy van that you give out free candy from?” I hiss angrily at him, leaning towards him until we are a couple inches apart.

“What… the _fuck_!” He rages with ominous quiet and thunder builds in his eyes. “What is that supposed to fucking mean? Do you think I’m FUCKING SCARY?”

“No, I’m _not_ afraid of you! I think you’re judgmental and mean and a bully and _you_ can’t take back what _you_ dish out!” I whisper angrily, my cheeks heating up from the stares we are getting. “I’m making the same snap-judgment that you made of me. You started this by being mean to me. And you hurt my feelings.” I blink rapidly for a moment, feeling my eyes sting. “And my ass isn’t fake, screw you.”

He takes a mighty breath, as if preparing to shout me into the ground, but then he sees the shine of unfallen tears in my eyes. I want to tell him not to be flattered, I cry at the drop of a hat and it’s not always in direct reflection of my feelings. It has always been something that has plagued me and something that I can’t control, something that burns me with embarrassment. But still, I don’t say anything about it; I only bite my lip hard and turn back to my apple juice.

“Yeah, well you hurt mine too, damn it! You… _you_ … fucking… _gah_!” He throws his arms up in exasperation, not noticing as I beckon the bartender for another round for Trevor. “Am I right or not? _Tell_ me.”

“No, Trevor, you aren’t right.” I frown, facing him again, my eyes darting in between his irrationally angry ones. “I don’t see why it should matter to _you_ , but no, none of those things are true about me. I don’t do cleanses, I just don’t like the taste of alcohol and it doesn’t have the best history in my family anyway. And as for all the other things about me… I don’t know what to say, that’s how I look and you don’t have to like it.”

I watch him as he soaks that in, his chest no longer heaving in angry, rapid breaths, his eyes slowing down from the way that they had been frantically searching my face. “Yeah. Sure.”

His face draws down heavily into an angry frown, glancing for a moment at the new bottle of beer that is set in front of him. “I’m _sorry_.” He says it bitterly, like a child being forced to by a parent, and snatches the beer up in his hand before putting away a third of it in one monstrous gulp.

I sigh, glancing at the group of men who are playing darts, watching them as they look over our way suspiciously. “So what _is_ true about you then, Trevor?”

He looks over to me and I watch, with some surprise, as his stormy expression turns rapidly into a lewd sort of smirk—instantaneous, almost like the flipping of a light switch. _Yikes_.

“What are you _curious_ about, Jacky?” He grins at me as he holds his beer bottle close to his mouth, a scar on his upper lip clashing with the gleaming straight teeth that his expression reveals.

I giggle a bit in spite of myself, sniffing back the tears that had been threatening a moment ago, and lean forward conspiratorially. “Is _your_ ass fake?”

“Hah!” He barks, head thrown back, and beams at me. “Wanna feel?”

We both laugh now, my cheeks heating despite the lack of alcohol in my system, and it feels as if the tension between us that had been building up previously had begun to fade a bit. Still, I begin to wonder a bit more on all of this—his intensely strong opposition against LS and those people who lived there. What he had described was a stereotype of my generation: millennials. Was he really that much of a grumpy old man? How old _was_ he, even? And why be so offended by my abstinence from alcohol—enough so to go off on a tangent insulting my personality based on such a trivial feature. _What a strange guy_. My laughter stirs up some discomfort in my chest—damn allergies—and coupled with my already weak chest, I get a bit of a coughing fit that doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

Trevor stares at me thoughtfully as I hide my hacking in the crook of my elbow, throwing back another sip of his beer with a very liquid sounding slosh. “You sick or somethin’?”

I turn a watery eye on him, trying to gauge if I should dare give him more firepower with which to make fun of me. Well, he might find out sooner or later—besides, I’ve found it’s best to tell people about my asthma before they’re caught up in the middle of an attack. Usually eases the shock of it, and prevents any unnecessary ‘911’ calls from being made.

“Nah. Um, I’ve got some pretty bad Asthma.” I explain sheepishly, flicking a piece of peanut shell across the bar once I regained composure. “Coupled with seasonal allergies—well, I’m kind of screwed.”

“Asthma, eh?” He considers that for a moment, smiling a bit. “You got one of those… Hmm—the fuck are they called?” He pantomimes an inhaler, though he makes it look like something of a nerd’s feature—his noises taking on a nasal tone.

I nod despite his teasing, hauling my purse up with a thud onto the bar top. Trevor’s eyebrows rise at that, his mouth hanging open—a habit of his when processing new information, I’ve noticed—as his head tilts to the side in observation. I search around through the big bag, setting a few things on the counter to get them out of the way, before I let out a little, “Ah-ha!”

I hold out my inhaler for his inspection, only to hesitate and pull it back out of his grasp as he reaches with dirty fingers straight for the mouthpiece. “Whoa, careful. Lots of dirt sets me off, alright? You don’t want me to have an attack, do you?”

“Hmm, well, that depends…Will I have to give you mouth to mouth?” Trevor waggles his brows, ignoring my warning and snatching up my inhaler anyway. He pays no attention to my exclamation of ‘ack!’ and continues to manhandle my lifeline with his grubby, thick fingers. “Sheesh, do you get high with this or what, freckles?”

I frown at that, watching him observe the inhaler for a moment. “Freckles?”

Trevor looks up with something of an innocent expression—a look that doesn’t settle into his gruff features gracefully—and winks at me before reaching up his free hand to touch his index finger to my cheek, tracing my cheekbone. “Yup, right here.”

My cheeks feel a bit hot—awkwardly so— at the show of such a calm, chaste action from this otherwise outrageously irate man. He doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort, instead going back to staring down the mouthpiece of the inhaler.

“No, I don’t. Get high off it, I mean.” I laugh awkwardly, watching him suspiciously as he holds the device up to his ear and shakes it violently. “Something tells me that is one of your first questions with most items you come across.”

I watch in horror, no in _slow motion_ , as Trevor grins wickedly at me and wraps his lips around the mouthpiece of my inhaler, squeezing it and taking a monster of an inhale of the medicine. “Shit!” I gasp a bit too intensely and it immediately sends me into another coughing fit. He ignores me as he blows the vapor out too fast through his lips. This, in turn, causes him too to start coughing violently, beating his fist onto the bar counter obnoxiously.

“What the… Jesus, _fuck_!” He wheezes between coughs. “ _Why_?”

“You didn’t exhale right!” I manage pitifully, pressing a hand to my chest as it begins to tighten from my coughing. “That’s a steroid, you know! Why would you take it without knowing what it was first?”

He looks to me with watering eyes, staring at me as if I’m an idiot, before he starts laughing aggressively along with his coughing. “Dear lord, you _are_ a fruit, aren’t you?”

I roll my eyes, instead trying to concentrate on taking deep, steadying breathes. Trevor continues to laugh, only pausing to slam back the rest of his beer. I steal a glance at him as I start to feel my phone vibrating on my thigh, smiling a bit in spite of my general opinion of him. _He’s an experience, that’s for sure_. I look down at my phone, seeing a couple of texts from Quentin all in a row, coupled with a missed call from Granny.

_J u okay? 6:12pm_

_Jack is everything alright? Is T being nice? 6:36pm_

_Pandora ANSWER me!! 7:20pm_

“Crap, gotta take this. I’ll be back.”

Trevor rolls his head backwards over his shoulders in order to keep his eyes on me as I walk around him. “HAH! You _do_ have an iFruit, you nasty minx!”

“Hmph.” I sniff irritably, not bothering to look back at him as I make my way towards the back of the bar, turning the corner until I’m met with the bathroom door. I duck inside, locking it behind me—as securely as possible, the hinge is hanging precariously from splintered wood—and I use the speed dial to call Granny. I hear her pick up on the other end, the sound of some muffled handling of the receiver can be heard, as well as a frustrated, “Oh, Phooey!” I smile at that, waiting until she gets the phone situated, glancing at my reflection in the mirror.

“Hello?” Comes Granny’s voice, a bit broken and shaky with age, and I can hear her oldies music in the background. “Hello there?”

“Hey Granny, its Jack.” I say loudly, wanting to avoid having her remind me to speak up with every other word. “You called me?”

“Yeah, baby, yeah. Well I… I need you to pick up some cat food before Quentin and you heads home. Hmm?” She replies, sounding a bit distracted, and I feel a spike of worry.

“Sure, Gran. Everything okay?” I lean against the sink, jumping a bit at the alarming sound of it creaking under my weight. “You—um, sound preoccupied.”

“Well, Jack, I’s tryin’ to watch my program when you called! Phooey!” She laughs at her own irritation before it’s even fully out of her mouth. “Oh, listen to me now… I called _you_ , didn’t I?”

“Yeah, Gran, you did ten minutes ago and I missed it.” I try not to sound too worried, because I know she gets embarrassed about her memory. “I’m calling back. I’m sorry I’m out late, you need me back home?”

“Oh phooey to that, don’t worry Jacky.” Her muffled voice comes over the receiver, followed by the faint sound of applause coming from her TV. “You have fun tonight, hm? Don’t worry about curfew, it’s a weekend.”

“Alright.” I chew my lip, not sure if I should remind her that I haven’t had a curfew for nearly eight nears. “I won’t be home too late, though. What kind of cat foo—,”

I’m cut off by an ungodly loud roar from outside in the bar: “BACK THE FUCK OFF YOU LOAD OF _CUNTS_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooohhh cliff hanger!! Or, actually, this chapter was originally verrryyy long and I cut it up into little pieces. :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy, thanks for tuning in! <3


	6. Scared Little Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's strength is tested.

“Uh—oh, geez.” I mumble, glancing at the bathroom door as a loud commotion stirs in the bar on the other side. “Gran, I’ll talk to you later, alright? Someone—uh, someone wants to use the bathroom that I’m in.”

“Alright, baby—,” Is all I hear before I’m furiously pressing the ‘end call’ button on my touch screen, simultaneously fiddling with the janky lock that threatens to trap me in here.

“Shit, come on!” I hiss under my breath, yanking with all my strength on the bathroom door as the sounds outside grow louder and louder by the second. Suddenly there is a loud slam on the door in front of me, enough to send the old piece of shit raining splinters of wood down onto my head and scaring me into falling back onto my ass. “ _Jesus_ —!”

“Jack! You in there?” It’s Trevor, breathing heavily it sounds like, as I hear some shouts in the background.

“Trevor!” I yell, kicking the door before me in frustration. “I’m trapped in here! What’s happening, are you alright?”

“Christ, woman.” He growls, followed by what sounds like a scuffle of feet, an ‘ _oof_!’, and a crash against the wall next to the bathroom door that shakes the floorboards beneath me. “Kick the— _fuck, **ow**_! Kick the fucking door down!”

“Kick the— _what_?” I splutter between coughs, having inhaled some dust from the bathroom door. “Are you _nuts_? I’d collapse a god damned lung from the exertion! You—you have to help me!”

“I’m leaving y— _Gah_ , FUCK OFF, _CHRIST_ , I’m trying to have a conversation, you turd!” Another grunt, another thud. “I’m leaving you here if you don’t hurry the _fuck_ up, Jacky!” He roars at me through the door, another powerful slam striking the other side of the door hard enough to weaken the hinges visibly.

“No, Trevor you don’t understand, I can’t!” I begin to panic, the muscles in my chest feeling as if they are weaving together and tightening like leather, restricting how deeply I took my breaths. My throat begins to itch, constricting and heating up. “I—I’ll… I don’t know what will happen if I…”

“ _Damn it_ , Jack!” I hear him grind out, another hit sending the door trembling again. _Is he punching the door_? “You can do this, you batty fruitcake! SO JUST FUCKING _DO IT_ ALREADY!”

I cover my ears with my palms, shaking my head at the very thought. I’m already getting rattled and I can certainly feel an attack coming on, and he wants me to _kick down a door_? Shit, though, I don’t want to be left behind at this bar with whatever trouble he has caused in my absence.

“Aw, crap!” I sob breathlessly, tears running down my face before I even feel the tickle of them in my eyes. Standing up is hard but not impossible—I wheeze and cough through the effort, grasping at my throat as I begin to choke on my own air. The sounds that I’m making are loud, apparently enough so to be heard from the other side of the door—after another scuffle I hear Trevor’s voice ring out.

“You gettin’ ready to smash the door, Jack-off?” Trevor sounds strained as well shortly before there is another crash against the wall, causing more dust and splinters to fall down onto me and all over the floor. “I’m getting fucked out here, hurry up!”

Without the ability to breathe, and with my inhaler out there with my purse, panic and adrenaline starts to kick in. My muscles feel hot and they jump into action, throwing my entire bodyweight into the weakened door. Like a frightened animal I continue to slam into the door, feeling something like relief blossom beautifully in my chest as the ratty old thing finally gives way, crashing out into the hall and thudding into a solid mass _hard_. I gasp for clean air and receive none, holding onto the ruined door frame with all that’s left of my strength as my eyes scan for Trevor. He’s there with me, looking with his bloodied mouth hanging open in observation of the damage I had caused. I look, too, down at the door where it is crushing a man in leather, a biker it looks like.

“Fuck _me_!” Trevor snarls, looking over at me with delight shining deviously in his eyes, only to see _my_ eyes wide with panic and my hands grasping my throat in the universal sign for, ‘I’m suffocating!’

“Oh, shit, right.” He nods, stepping over the ruined door and locking his bicep around my shoulders in an effort to drag me along with him as we burst back out into the bar’s main room. I hear a collective cacophony of noise erupt as we are walking, causing a spike of confusion in the back of my mind as I stumble after him. “Yeah, that’s right you fucking _fucks_! Hmm? Yeah—back up, back the _fuck_ up!”

“Trevor!” I hear the thickly-accented bartender screech. “GET OUT of my bar with that thing!”

I look up to Trevor, my eyes nearly bulging in shock at the sight of a mean, dark black pistol gripped in his hand, his knuckles white from his handle on it. If I weren’t panicking before, I sure as shit would be now. Struggling in his grip does nothing, his strength is far superior and he ignores me anyway, instead steering me towards my purse on the bar counter. He snatches it up without looking, silently pointing his handgun at the group of men clad in leather and leading me towards the bar’s exit.

We burst out into the cold night air, the sickly-green colored light of the bar’s back exit nearly blinding me with its intensity. At this point my own hands are choking myself in panic, I’m wheezing and gasping and hiccupping on the thick black cloud of terror that billows angrily in my heart.

_I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m suffocating, I’m actually suffocating._

“Okay, okay, okay.” Trevor chants breathlessly to himself, leading me towards a secluded area beside a dumpster where the light isn’t so blinding. He upends my purse onto the ground, falling to his knees as he frantically sorts through my fallen items. “Inhaler, inhaler… Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, _shit_! WHERE is it?” My back is pressed against the cool, damp wall of the decayed bar, my nails digging reddened crescents into my throat as I squeeze my neck hard in my grasp.

“It’s not here, Jack. I can’t find it.” He breathes, standing up and watching me gasp hoarsely with distress in his eyes. “ _Christ_ , stop choking yourself! Are you fucking insane?” Trevor wrenches my hands away from my throat with ease, holding my wrists in one hand as he grabs my jaw tightly in his other hand. He tilts my face forcibly up to look at him; his eyes are wildly searching my face. “ _What_ do I do, Jack? What do I do without an inhaler?”

He pauses for a moment—as if waiting for me to answer—and releases my wrists to wipe the tears from my cheeks before he gives my face a few light slaps in an attempt to sober me. “Hey, hey! Do you need a hospital, kid? Come on, just fucking breathe! _Jesus_ , don’t be so _dramatic_!”

I sob in desperation, wishing that I could speak to him, and keen loudly in fear as my words fail to form on my tongue. He huffs angrily when I don’t— _can’t_ —reply, suddenly gripping my jacket collar in his hands and giving me a hard shake that makes my teeth click together. “Snap out of it, Jacky, fuck!” He’s angry and he’s scaring me, I wish I could tell him, but he just doesn’t understand. “Chill the hell out! Come on!”

In desperation I cling to him, reaching up and fisting my hands in his hair and yanking him roughly against my body, staring hard into his bewildered eyes. I wheeze in the air he pants out, hot and fevered, and frantically try to draw him in closer to me. _Hold me, calm me down, please._ Somehow it clicks; he lets me cling to him, abruptly splaying his hands firmly on my sternum with an eerily calm determinedness in the action. He watches me, never looking away from my frightened eyes, and doesn’t pull away when I gasp and tear at his body for the warmth of him. He is a strong anchor to cling to and so I do just that, as if my life depended on it, and we stand there in the dark, the occasional passing car or barking dog the only sounds that disrupt the swallowing silence of the night.

I’m still crying, sobbing miserably and gasping, and he takes a deep breath for me—as if trying to patiently teach me how to breathe all over again. Trevor reaches one of his hands up to smooth back my hair while keeping the other firmly on my chest. “Alright, _alright_ —shit… Shh, kid. You’re _okay_.”

Even if I’m still in the down-throes of panic, I’m still able to muse on the situation that I’m currently in. This supposed awful man, this man who just an hour before I was determined to brush aside and file him away in whatever role I deemed appropriate for him, is here with me, saving me, helping me, keeping me grounded. He’s a criminal, a bully, and possibly crazy—why is he helping me? Who is he, what does he owe me?

“There we go...” He whispers with a weary break in his voice, and I blink, realizing that I am _breathing_ —weakly, but still breathing. I’m alive. I’m not suffocating. “Shhh.”

I feel tired and I decide to lean my weight against him, releasing the death grip that I have on his hair and I lean my forehead against his chest. His hands are on my hair, smoothing it against my head awkwardly—as if he is not accustomed to such a gesture. I breathe out shakily, able to come to my senses enough to smell him. It is not a good smell, it is dirty, but somehow I don’t feel in danger of it triggering an attack. His filth doesn’t hurt me.

“Trevor.” I manage to wheeze out and I wince at the rough sound of it.

“Hm?” He grumbles deeply, like a bear I think, and I sigh unsteadily.

“I’m cold.”

He groans loudly in disgust, letting his hands drop from me and back to his sides where they are stiff and straight as boards. “You, Jack, are _the most_ melodramatic person I have _ever_ met. And I’ve met some really fucking silly people in my life!”

I sniff sensitively at that, the bite of embarrassment rearing its head before I push myself away from him spitefully. He stumbles back a bit, crunching his big boots on a lip balm that had been shaken loose from my purse during his search for my inhaler. “Jerk.” I wipe at the tears on my face even as I feel more stinging at my eyes. “Cold air is bad for asthma, that’s all I meant. Geez.”

“Right.” Trevor rolls his eyes, lacing his hands together on the back of his head as he paces around, waiting while I stuff all of my discarded things back in my bag. He looks immensely uncomfortable. “Hurry it up, alright? I’m taking you to the hospital—,”

“No!” He looks down at me in alarm, his eyes running over my pink nose that shines with running snot and my eyes that glow red around the edges from tears. “I mean… It’s fine. I really don’t need to, the attack is over. All I need now is my inhaler, and… and—um…”

Trevor waits for me to finish, standing over me as I shuffle on my knees on the pavement, reaching for my makeup bag and tossing it into my purse. He holds his arms out and bends slightly at the knees, mouth hanging open and eyes wide with irritation: the very picture of outrage. “And _what_ , what else do you need?”

“Stop being an ass, okay?” I grumble, throwing my bag over my shoulder and straightening my clothes with a few tugs before I stand to face him. “Sorry that whole thing was _too intense_ for you—or… _whatever_! But I can’t help it, okay? I told you I had asthma, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah—you did, Jacky, but _Jesus_!” He waves my words away with his hands erratically. _He’s actually upset with me_? “God, you act so _helpless_ about it. Give me a fuckin’ break!”

“Wh— _what_? _Excuse_ me?” I snap at him, hugging myself tightly as a harsh desert breeze chills me. “Are you saying I’m faking it or something? Making it bigger than it is for attention?”

“Fuck me, I don’t know! What I _do_ know, _Jack_ , is that you act like you’re a scared little girl.” He points a finger at me, his bizarre eyes eating me up in their rage. “You can save _yourself_ , you know? I mean, Christ, you didn’t even want to kick down the door!”

“Hey asshole, I’m not being weak because I’m cautious about pushing my limits!” I fire back, stepping closer and slapping his finger out of the way to prevent myself from being poked by it. “I know my illness, _you_ don’t!”

“Oh your illness, your _illness_! _Oohhh_!” He imitates me in a high, nasally voice, dancing around on his toes with his hands waving around in the air—if I weren’t so offended I might’ve found the image hilarious. He stops abruptly, his fists clenched hard at his sides as he leans in close with his voice lowering to a stony growl. “Bull _shit_ , you’re stronger than that. Or maybe not, huh? _Right_ , sorry—what _the fuck_ do _I_ know about you?”

“Nothing. You don’t know _shit_.” I bite my lip, trying to desperately wipe the tears away before they fall. It’s too late, though, he sees it.

“Oh—oh _there_ we go. Yeah. Mhmm.” He nods, his lips a thin line of annoyance and—strangely—discomfort. He paces in front of me, licking his lips. “ _Why_ are you crying, Jack? Was I _mean_ again?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I mumble, wiping irritably at my face. “I… can’t control when I cry, okay?” He doesn’t respond immediately to that, instead choosing to let that confession hang in the air as he huffs out white clouds of steaming breath. I scoff bitterly, attempting to hide my tears by staring intensely at the dumpster behind him. “Let me guess, that makes me weak too?”

“Hey, sweetheart, you’re the one who sets limits for herself!” He shrugs with an infuriating amount of pretentious nonchalance.

I stare at him for a moment, blown away by how _irate_ one person can make me in so few words—a person I’ve _just met_. Unable to help myself, I stamp my feet huffily into the pavement and shake my fists, letting out a broken shriek of rage before I stomp a few steps forward and push my hands against Trevor’s chest— _hard_. He stumbles a bit, but otherwise seems unfazed physically. Until…

“ _YES_!” He screams suddenly, his eyes alight with sparkling joviality and amusement. “Hit me, baby, please! Come on! FUCKING _FIGHT_ ME! ” He shuts his eyes tight, his whole back and neck arching backwards with his arms spread out wide, as if offering his torso up for me to beat into. I stare at him in shock, my jaw dropped and my eyebrows knit together.

“Holy shit!” I gasp, laughing a bit hysterically as I begin to come down from my crackling anger and he peeks an eye open to see why I haven’t hit him. “We don’t know each other… Why are we even arguing? I don’t even know who _the fuck_ you are.”

“Oh, but you do. Mhmm, yup— _you do_.” He says, suddenly fervent and jumping with heat. “And—and you know what? I know _you_ , Jack. I do, I _promise_. I fucking _love_ you, you’re insane and I can _see_ that, trust me, I know a short fuse when I see one, sweetheart! You’re just _bursting_ with it, _mmm_!”

“ _Don’t_ say that to me!” I seethe through gritted teeth, Trevor’s grin unraveling instantly into that slack-jawed, vacant eyed, stupid fucking look he gets when he’s processing something. “I hate when people say that and don’t mean it— _don’t_ tell me you love me, you dirty, smelly harebrained fuck!”

That god damn grin is back on his face and he’s really eating all this up, staring up at me from where he is now crouched on the ground, his eyes shining in the nearby light from the bar.

“Wow, okay, _wow_ …” I breathe slowly, deeply, the cold air jarring my chest. I turn away from him, walking around in a circle to avoid him as he follows me about. _Like a mutt, Jesus_. “I… I need to be somewhere with warm air… I need…” I lean forward, putting my hands on my knees and trying to catch my breath. Trevor leans his head upside down to stare at my face, crouching down further to keep from losing balance. “I need cat food.”

“Hmm…” He ponders this seriously for a moment before beaming at me from where his head lolls upside down. “You’re pretty zany, sweetheart, I fucking called it. Cat food? Jesus—and I thought _I_ was fucked.”

“No. No it’s for…” I sigh in exhaustion, closing my eyes and lowering myself down onto the pavement where I sit in defeat. “My grandma’s cats. I haven’t eaten cat food since—,” I stop myself from finishing that train of thought, looking up to see him watching me keenly. Sobering up very suddenly, I stand up as abruptly as my energy will allow and fix Trevor with a hard look before I hold my palms up and back away from him. “You know what, forget it. I need to call Quentin, he’s gotta take me home now. Good night and good luck, Trevor.”

“Ah, ah, ah!” Trevor takes a wide side-step to stop my getaway—which is not difficult with his long legs—and holds up his two index fingers with a slow grin splitting his face. He waggles his fingers with his words for emphasis. “Why don’t _I_ get you your kibbles, huh? _Then_ … I’ll take you home. Simple as that, no bullshit.”

I narrow my eyes suspiciously at him, giving him a look up and down as he takes a few discreet steps towards me. “You’ve been drinking.” I accuse, hugging my purse protectively as he leans in.

“Oh, _yeah_ , you think _I’d_ be pissed after two beers, Jack-o?” He barks out a harsh and sarcastic, ‘HAH!’ as he rocks back on his heels excitedly, beaming at me when I jump from the sudden outburst. “How cute, hm? Nah, nah I’m _fine_ , sober as a judge! ‘Sides, Chef—or, sorry, sorry, _Quentin_ —has _lots_ of work to do.”

Looking around at how quickly it had gotten dark, I sigh a bit irritably through my nose, sliding my eyes back to Trevor’s expectant grin. He doesn’t seem to process my reluctant grimace negatively, which is a good sign. “You’re a bit of a clinger, aren’t you?” I say finally, snorting a bit when I fail to hold back a laugh.

“I’m a leg-humper, too.” He assures me, waggling his eyebrows at me, and I laugh a bit easier at how ridiculous this man is. _Am I delirious? Tired? Still high on adrenaline? Or maybe oxygen deprived? **Why** am I humoring him?_ “Yes or no, hm? I don’t got all night, Jack-off.”

I decide in a bizarre, knee-jerk sort of reaction—one I did not necessarily agree with the second it fell from my lips. “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, beautiful readers, for kudos, comments, and for taking the time to give this a read. Every new alert I get puts a huuuuge smile on my face. <3 <3
> 
> This is so much god damn fun to write!!!


	7. Cat Food

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T and Jack make a supply run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loooonnnnggggg chapter ahead. I'm sorry about that!! <3

The last time I had music _this fucking loud_ was when I was eighteen and full of piss and vinegar. It seems to writhe and seethe through the speakers of this piece of crap Bodhi, shaking the entire frame and rocking my poor sternum in a constant stream of off rhythm beats. That coupled with the speed with which Trevor rockets us through the dark streets is enough to make me unleash a death grip on both the car door and dashboard in front of me. I brace myself for another harsh, screeching turn and _Jesus fucking Christ_ I swear that the rear tires bounce off the pavement from the force of the angle. I look to Trevor as I decide to adjust my prepare-for-death-by-collision position, looping my arms around the back of my seat’s headrest and bracing my sandals on the dashboard. He, not surprisingly, is very casual about this life threatening drive. In fact, he is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, rocking his head to the music and glancing about the road occasionally with a heavy air of comfort. 

“Trevor.” I gasp, wincing a bit as the car rocks heavily over a pothole. He doesn’t hear me or maybe just ignores me, mouthing along with the indecipherable lyrics and humming loudly enough for me to hear over the wind. “Trevor!”

Nothing, still he hums and drums against the steering wheel. I scrunch my face up into an impatient glare, willing him to notice that my eyes are boring into the side of his face as I call to him again over the wind and music. Finally, unable to take the grating music, I draw myself up until I’m inches from his face. He notices my proximity immediately and turns slightly in surprise to look at me with that silly-looking open mouthed gaze, though I’ve already drawn in a large breath to shout into his ear, “ _HEY_!”

My attempt to get his attention is a mistake for it startles him, causing him to swerve a bit over-dramatically and the force of the move sends me slamming into the passenger side door. Nothing terrible, but my eyes cross a bit from the impact and my next inhale comes up quite shallow as he attempts to right his truck into a straight line on the road. “Fuck! What the—,” He bellows, slapping at the volume dial on his stereo until the music is finally muted before turning to me. “Are you trying to pop my fucking ear drums, you prick? _Fuck me_ …”

I sigh in relief of the sudden silence of the car ride and let myself sink back into my seat before I glance over at him. He is wiggling his pinky finger in the ear that I shouted into, opening and closing his jaw as if attempting to loosen water in his eardrum. “I was trying to get your attention _before_ that; it wasn’t like my first reaction was to scream at you.”

“Yeah but you fucking did it anyway!” He accuses, looking over at me with his brow furrowed. “ _Jesus_ , what’s wrong with you? I could’ve crashed!”

“You—um, you _could’ve_ crashed?” I repeat, laughing in spite of the wave of indignation that passes over me. “So wait, wait—that’s _not_ your goal of this little trip? Cause I could’ve _sworn_ that you were driving like we’re in a freaking monster truck rally on purpose.”

“You got a problem with the way I drive?” Trevor puffs up a bit and I can tell he’s getting defensive. Laughing would only make this worse so I try as best as I can to hold it back, reminding myself that my own temper—while not _nearly_ as extreme, of course—was once not so unlike Trevor’s when I was younger: distrustful, explosive, and quick to assume. Only difference is that it seems like he never _tried_ to control it and instead only fanned it until it was at a constant, searing blaze. What a nightmare that must be, to live like that…

“Yes, when there are no seatbelts in this death trap of a truck, I _do_ have a problem.” I explain evenly, rubbing at my shoulder where it had hit up against the car door. 

“Seatbelts…” He huffs, now grinning and looking rapidly between me and the road as he tries to keep his wheels straight. “Yeah, you know, you’re _probably_ right? Yup, see, at this _very_ moment I have the potential to launch your ass like a jet, careening tragically through the night before crashing to your untimely demise!” I watch him as he uses one finger to imitate my supposed ascent into the air, adding a high pitched, “ _Pewwwww!_ ” Followed by a loud explosive sound that sprays spit onto the windshield, his face scrunched up boyishly in concentration of his imitation.

“Well, I _have_ always wanted to fly.” I snort, hoping my sarcasm is conveyed. Trevor looks over to me, a glimmer in his eyes, and suddenly taps the brakes. It’s nothing extreme, my arms easily fly out to catch myself on the dash, but the lurch coupled with his demented description is enough to wrench a startled yelp from me. 

Trevor bursts out into a fit of mean-spirited cackles, his head thrown back and his hands rapidly slapping into the steering wheel, honking a few times on accident. “You are too fucking much, Jacky. _Toooo_ fucking much.”

It takes me a moment to realize that we’ve pulled off of the road and into the half-empty parking lot of a Checkout! store. The idea of going to a Checkout! in Blaine County at night sounds pretty atrocious but I keep my mouth shut on that, instead fixing Trevor with a heavy glare as he pulls into a parking spot—well, two spots, actually. _**Of course** he parks like a raging asshole._ I sink down into my seat at the stares we are receiving. “That was shitty of you.” I comment on his parking.

I hear Trevor’s pants scuffing against the crusty, stained fabric of his seat as he turns to look at me, his arm slung casually over the steering wheel. He raises a brow at me. “I wasn’t _actually_ going to cause your death, you ditz. It was a fucking _joke_. You know—those _things_ that are supposed to lighten the fucking mood? Christ.”

I blink at that, pondering on his defensive tone for a moment, and scrunch up my nose a bit. _Well, I wasn’t talking about **that** , you big oaf._ I’ll play along, I decide—he deserves a little guilt. “What if my reflexes weren’t refined?” I reply, mostly joking, and roll my head over to look up at Trevor from where I’m creeping down low in my seat. “What if—,”

“ _What if? What if?_ ” He imitates me in a shrill voice. “Ack, just fuck it, Jack! It wasn’t _that_ bad, hmm? Buck up, sweetheart, don’t you _trust me_?” He flashes me a bit of a charmingly deranged sort of grin before he registers my discomfort. His smile falls, his mouth hanging open and his eyes scanning over my position slowly. “Why are you _hiding_?”

“People are upset at us for parking like assholes.” I whisper, my cheeks heating up at the look of disgust that passes over Trevor’s face. “And I—I… don’t know if I trust you. Should I?”

Trevor blinks at me, looking a bit nonplussed by that question for a moment before his face suddenly clouds darkly with anger. He rips the keys from the ignition and struggles with his car door before finally forcing it open with a loud screech. He slams it hard enough to rock the whole truck considerably. I scramble to sit up straight in my seat, watching him stomp around the truck-bed until he’s at my door, yanking it open and stepping aside with his arm outstretched—like some kind of demented chauffeur.

I smile at him a bit uncertainly, reaching down for my purse and heaving it over my shoulder before I jump out of my seat and onto the pavement next to Trevor. He isn’t looking at me as he slams my door possibly even harder than he did his, the sound echoing like a thunder-clap throughout the parking lot. I sigh a bit at that, shooting Trevor a look as he takes my elbow in his hand and leads me quickly towards the supermarket entrance. 

“What’s up your ass?” I pout, twisting my arm away from his grip as we enter the store.

“Oh, _I don’t know_! Hmm, hmm, _let me see_... Oh, I got it!” He replies quite loudly in a pseudo-cheery sort of tone, drawing the attention of some tired looking customers. The wolves detect imposters in their midst, and god damn do Trevor and I stand out like a pair of sorry sore thumbs. “Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t like carting around an LS _whinebag_ on a Saturday night when I _could_ be getting some very important shit done! How’s _that_ , sugar?”

“Well sor _ry_.” I chuckle in order to hide the spark of annoyance that flares in my chest—I’m thankfully given a distraction, though, as I spot an abandoned cart and claim it quickly. Trevor follows, despite whatever irritation he feels I have ignited in him, and we stroll through the miserable supermarket in search of the pet aisles. 

This all feels very strange and I abruptly realize that _it is_ —this is absolutely _bizarre_. I am walking around a shitty chain-store with some old, unwashed, most-likely-criminal who is more outraged with me and my personality than deemed appropriate for two people who have just met. And that’s the thing— _we’ve just met_. Why does this all feel so… concrete? I feel as if I’ve been fighting with this man my entire god damned life. It’s _exhausting_ and his personality strikes too close to home for me to be _truly_ comfortable around him—he is perhaps an over-exaggerated shadow of what I would have been if I hadn’t escaped from this life in Blaine County: angry, sensitive, and deep in some sort of seedy profession. I cringe at the thought, finding myself to be a bit conceited for doing so, but there it is. 

“How old are you, anyway?” Trevor suddenly speaks up, his tone a bit tight with something akin to discomfort. I glance over at him in mild confusion from where I stand contemplating what sort of cat food my Gran deems appropriate—she is picky as all hell about a lot of things and I can imagine that it’s fully possible that cat food is one of them. “I mean, you’re not like… _just_ out of high school, are you?”

“God no!” I scrunch up my nose in disgust, eliciting that toothy, shit-eating grin of his. Still, I can’t help but feel a little offended by that… I know I have a bit of a baby face but, really? High school? _Yikes_. “I’m…” I stop, narrowing my eyes and nodding my head at him. “No, wait, how old are _you_?”

“Fuck off.” He rolls his eyes good-naturedly, letting himself fall back into the shelf that holds kitten food in order to lean up against it nonchalantly. “I don’t know, _older than you_ —that’s for fucking sure. Come on, tell me!”

I turn back to the loaded bags in front of me, feigning great interest in them in order to stamp down my sudden self-consciousness. _Aren’t you supposed to get over feeling like a little kid once you’re at least out of high school? Sheesh._ “I’m… Twenty four, if you _must_ know. My birthday’s in two months, though, so…”

“Jesus…” Trevor sighs, sounding amused as he rubs at the stubble on his face and looks me up and down. I purse my lips a bit and swallow thickly, reaching my hand up to fiddle with the corner of a bag of cat food. His stare—when that wild sparkle is dimmed in favor of thoughtfulness—is a bit penetrating, oddly enough; I fidget under his attention. 

“What?” I laugh in what I hope is a breezy sort of way. He smiles, shaking his head. “Let me guess: you think I’m a kid now or something, right?”

“You _are_ a kid compared to _me_ , sweetcheeks.” Trevor rumbles, not unkindly, and I can feel my ears heat up. “But no, I’m just a bit relieved. You know, ‘cause some of the chicks these days look like they’re in their fucking thirties when really they’re still in grade school. For fucks sake.”

“Oh.” I nod, thinking on that a bit. “You were hoping I wasn’t in high school?”

“I don’t want to _fuck_ a high-schooler; do you think I’m some kind of molester? Huh?” He barks angrily at me, pushing off bodily from the shelf and bunching his fists up.

I laugh whole-heartedly, unable to help it as I pick up on the meaning in his accidental confession, and lean my head against the cat food. I point a finger at my chest. “You want to fuck me?” 

Trevor pauses in what I’m sure was the beginning of a temper tantrum, blinking at me with that dumbfounded look of his before I see his tongue working against his teeth in his open mouth. A sleazy smile spreads across his face then, his eyes a bit charming, I must admit, in the way they gleam with devious intent. He saunters over to me then, leaning over me with his superior height and flashing his teeth at me. “Abso _lutely_ , _senorita_.”

At this close proximity I pick up on his unpleasant smell and I resist the urge to scrunch up my nose at him pettily, instead shifting my head until my face is tilted up towards him. I lean in a bit, relishing in the subtle surprise I see passing through his expression. “You _wish_.” I whisper, giving him a wink as he mashes his lips together in an attempt to hide his smile—doesn’t matter, though, it’s all in the savage glow of his eyes. “You still think I’m Mexican, don’t you? Piss off, my ethnicity isn’t a guessing game, you dork. And even if it _were_ you’d be wrong.”

“Hey, all _I_ know is that you’re some kind of… freakish half-breed!” Trevor backs away from me then and the tension snaps back to normal. His smile is absolutely insolent as all shit and he holds his palms up as if to appear innocent. “And hey! Hey! _What’s wrong_ with being Mexican? Hm? What—what, are you a _racist_ , Jacky? How fucking appalling!”

I roll my eyes, turning back to the cat food and picking a bag at random to heft onto my shoulder with a grunt from the weight of it. I drop the bag into the cart before grabbing another, though it’s futile—Trevor lifts it from my grasp with one hand without a word, the veins in his forearm straining a bit against his tattooed skin as he easily drops it into the cart. _Show off_. “And calling me a half-breed _isn’t_ racist?”

“Hey! I am _**not**_ a racist, sweetheart.” Trevor warns a bit seriously, pointing a finger between my eyes and poking me in the forehead with it lightly. I smack his hand away crossly and narrow my eyes at him in warning: _do not touch me again_. “I’m just… confused by you! All your, uh, _shit_ that you have going on.” He gestures in an indistinct circular motion to the entirety of my face with his hand. “I mean—your eyes aren’t even the right color, gives me the fuckin’ _willies_!”

I frown, watching his exaggerated full body tremble of disgust. “What’s… um, _wrong_ with my eyes?” 

“Ack, I don’t fucking _know!_ ” Trevor seems flustered by that question, meeting my gaze for a moment before he rolls his eyes towards the ceiling and holds his arms out impatiently. “They just don’t… have any color—or something. They’re just _dark_ , not brown or blue or anything! It’s fucking weird.”

“Piss off.” I mumble dejectedly, feeling a bit stung—foolishly. My eyes have always been a bit under-whelming in their dull darkness, the same as my fathers. Passed on by Granny, of course, but her eyes always had a beautiful water-like shine to them—but they were _blue-gray_ , of course, stunning and sweet. As for dad and me? Well, we weren’t so lucky. Slate. Wet pavement. Thunderhead gray. Those were close depictions, unfortunately. 

I see Trevor watching me out of the corner of my eye as I grab a shampoo and conditioner at random, throwing them into the cart and pushing off before he can catch up properly. “Aww come on, sweetheart, don’t get all pissy. It’s not my fault you have soulless eyes.”

“Quit—ugh!” I stop abruptly in the middle of the aisle, turning to face him and seeing him struggle to keep from running into me from where he had been following closely at my heel. “Would you quit fucking picking on me? Be _nice_.”

Trevor leans his head to the side and smiles thoughtfully, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I _am_ nice, Jack-o. Sheesh, you’re sensitive, hm?”

“Hmph. Yes.” I admit, swallowing down the soreness in my throat that threatens to conjure tears, and I turn back to my cart. _Why am I letting this get to me?_ I haven’t felt this touchy in ages, Jesus. 

“Alright! _Fine_.” He groans, jiggling his car keys around testily in his pocket as he crouches a bit closer to my eye level. “ _Jesus_ , Jack you’re a whiner. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to _not_ give your bully a reaction? Hm?”

“Apparently not.” I sniff, not bothering to look back at him as I grab an obnoxious pink loofah and toss it into the cart. “I wouldn’t assume you would be the bullying type, though.”

“I’m whatever the fuck I want to be.” Trevor is walking next to me suddenly and I look over at him. He is smiling contentedly, staring ahead as he strolls along next to me with his hands in his pockets. Self-assurance incarnate, supposedly. I don’t buy that, honestly, judging from my short experience with him, but I won’t mention anything. 

“ _That_ I can see.” I sigh, nodding a bit to myself as he glances at me from the corner of his eye, a small smirk playing at his lips. “You um… you really want to know what I am? Not that it, uh, matters. I just get that question a lot, especially when I lived in LS.”

He focuses his attention on me—something that is a bit overwhelming, to be honest—and nods slowly, mouth hanging open and eyes flickering over me quickly in observation. “Lay it on me, half-breed.” 

I snort at that, giving him another sidelong glance before I take a deep breath and blow it out in defeat through my nose. “Dad is half black and half white. Mom is from the Philippines.”

“Ahhh…” He nods sagely, giving me a once over—making a big show of leaning back to look pointedly at my ass. “Yeah, I had a feeling you might have a little… _home-girl_ in you.” 

“Christ…” I grumble, quietly enjoying the way he smiles boyishly at me as we make our way over to the self-checkout. “Why, what are you? Philips… That sounds—”

“Aaa- _merican_!” He hollers with a heavy southern twang, shooting me a wink as he grabs a cat food bag in each hand to scan. “I am what you call _white trash_ , my darling woman. Nothing halfsies about _moi_.”

“Halfsies, _right_.” I laugh, shaking my head before leaning over the cart to pick up the basic toiletries I had picked out. I weigh the pink loofah in my hand, looking from its bright neon hue to Trevor, watching his eyes flickering over the chewing gum options before settling on a couple and snatching them up. To my dismay, he shoves three or four packs into his pockets, followed by a few candy bars, and breath mints. “What are you _doing_?” I hiss, reaching out and slapping a rattling box of mints out of his hand. It falls to the linoleum floor loudly.

Trevor looks up at me with a baffled expression, holding his arms out wide in question as he looks down at the discarded box of mints. “What are _you_ doing? That was fucking _rude_ , I wanted those!”

“Then _buy_ them!” I roll my eyes, attempting to reach forward into his pockets to retrieve the rest of the candy. He side steps me, and then again, and again, until finally I back him up against the gum rack and he disables my attempts by grabbing my wrists firmly in his hands. “Don’t steal those, Trevor, that’s awful!”

“Is it? Is it _awful_?” He rolls his eyes, running his tongue over his teeth as he steals a painfully obvious look down my shirt from his higher angle. “It’s just a couple of chocolate bars and some gum, Jack-off. I was _going_ to take that fucking cat chow out on my shoulders too, but figured that’d be a bit too much of a risk—being heavy and all.”

“Why steal, though?” I wrench my arms from his grip though do not attempt to reach into his pockets again. Trevor’s brow draws together, as if my question isn’t something basic to most human morals, and licks his upper lip slowly in thought. _He’s actually thinking of the answer to that_ … Trevor then reaches into one of his pockets, pulling out a chocolate bar and waving it tauntingly in front of my face. I watch, huffing out an irritated sigh, as he tears open the wrapping of the candy, revealing the generic milk chocolate glistening unnaturally under the fluorescents. He slowly brings the chocolate to his mouth, watching me with a wicked glint in his eye all the while, and takes a large bite of it. 

“Mmm…” He rumbles deeply in his chest, chewing loudly and letting his eyes slide shut. I swallow a bit at the sight, feeling a spike of heat in my lower abdomen. _Uh, no, you’re not **that** desperate, Pandora_. He opens his eyes finally, nodding slowly at me whilst grinning, a lump of the candy still in between his teeth as he groans out gaudily—slightly slurred by his mouthful. “So good, _mmm_. Want a bite, Jacky?”

I turn away from him and begin scanning my items fast enough to make the machine’s friendly voice continually interrupt itself in the announcement of each of the prices. “Nope. No thank you, I’m good.”

There is a slight shift in the space behind me, just beside my shoulder, and my hair stands on end as the sudden heat of him startles me slightly. He corrals me in against the scanner, one hand splayed across the top of the sensor and the other dancing the candy bar in front of my nose. He isn’t touching me, I realize, but still he only hovers inches away from me. “Don’t be uptight, Jack. It’s just a _candy bar_.”

Trying to ignore him, I pick back up into the rhythm of scanning, though now I am doing it slowly enough to listen to the robotic voice fart out each price of the individual items. I clear my throat, sounding a bit fussy as I do, and try to force out a laugh to mask my growing irritation. “I think I’d rather lick the floor of this store.”

“Oh-ho-ho…” He giggles, eating up my discomfort eagerly judging from the delight in his tone, and he leans down to my ear. “You’re too scared to, aren’t you? Hm, yeah, that’s it. My mistake—I just thought, you know, that you could _handle_ this.”

I force out a sigh, my spine rigid and my ears burning, before I turn around abruptly to face him. My butt is pressed up against the scanner, a few bits and pieces poking into my ass uncomfortably. Trevor is sneering at me just as I had pictured him to be doing, though there is a little smear of chocolate near the scar that cuts through his top lip, the image oddly disarming. He wiggles the candy bar closely in front of me, as if trying to get my eyes to cross to look at it. “Open up, sugar.”

He unconsciously imitates me as I slowly open my mouth, his jaw slacking open in concentration, as he watches himself poke the chocolate bar immaturely at my lips a few times—it is very easy to figure out what he is associating this image with. “Mm, oh _yeah_ , that’s…” His eyes roll back into his head and he lets out a very sexualized and obnoxious moan—Trevor’s theatrics loud enough to make a nearby cashier raise a thickly penciled brow at us. “So _good_ , just, _a little deeper_ —.”

I can’t help but let out a snort of a laugh at him, rolling my eyes and reaching up to snatch the chocolate bar from his hand before he got the idea to thrust the candy in and out of my mouth. “I’ll take a bite, just—ugh, _let me do it!_ ”

We look like children—or maybe a pair of goofy, insufferable teenagers, more like. He holds the chocolate high above his head with his lengthy arm, grinning down at me as I try to jump up to grab it from him. He blocks me, snickering in delight, and stands on his tiptoes. “Just fucking take it, you dunce, come on!”

“Stop harassing me and let me take a bite!” I pant a bit from the exertion of jumping up and down, leaning my head back merrily and letting out a loud cackle at the absurdity of the situation— _I haven’t felt this light-hearted in years, Christ_. “Now I really want to know what it tastes like, damn it.” We both laugh noisily at that before we are interrupted by a fussy, ‘ _Ahem_ ’ to our right.

I stop bouncing around, letting go of where I had been gripping Trevor’s shirt for leverage, and look over to where an older man stands. He has a 12 pack in one hand and a large bottle of whiskey in the other, waiting in line behind us for the self check-out. A rush of cold shame kills my glee instantly at the site of this man’s impatience, and from the corner of my eye I can see Trevor observing me with a dark frown. 

“Crap, I’m really sorry.” I mumble quietly to the man, stepping away from Trevor and rushing to search through my purse for my wallet. 

“Yeah, well, some folks ain’t got the time for this.” The man snaps at me, shifting his large weight back and forth on his dusty work boots. I feel it—the spike of rumbling irritation that threatens to boil deep in my chest, tingling all the way down the ridge of my spine. Years of therapy have taught me to choose my battles, to work through the anger that I feel and rationalize it away into tiny headspace drawers within milliseconds to avoid an outburst. The kind of outburst that frequented my teenage-hood. So I busy myself with my over-packed purse, sniffing and swallowing hard to stamp down tears of embarrassment. 

“Hey.” I look up from where I had been searching for my debit card in my wallet, watching Trevor’s back coil up tightly through his shirt as he turns to the man. His voice is low and blunt like stone. “She said sorry, porky. Drop it.”

The man looks Trevor up and down for a moment before he puffs up a bit in defense, taking a step towards Trevor and gesturing to him with his 12 pack. “Listen boy, all I want is to get out of here. Just hurry up and let me have my turn.”

“Ohhh, mhmm… I see—yeah…” Trevor nods slowly, his fingers twitching at his sides as he runs his tongue thoughtfully along his bottom lip. “Yeah, _right_. You just want your _turn_ , hm?” I can almost see Trevor’s back bristling in aggression, his forearms swelling with the clenching and un-clenching of his fists. He has an energy about him, dark and bubbling, that is undeniably felt by this older man. Things are about to come to a head, I can feel it, so I take a step forward and put a hand on Trevor’s tense shoulder. I can see him pause in his mounting anger, if only for a moment, before he is rolling his shoulder to shake my hand off. 

“Grab your shit.” Is all that Trevor says to me after letting out a monster of an exhale through his nostrils, sounding as if he had attempted to physically deflate himself. 

“But—I haven’t paid for it.” I protest in a whisper, trying not to let the older man hear me. Trevor turns on me, holding his palms out in front of him as he crouches a bit to my level.

“I don’t give a _fuck_.” He hisses, eyes wild with crackling rage. I feel my irritation lashing hotly in my chest at the tone Trevor takes with me—he is obviously projecting his emotions onto me, _that_ I have experience with—and I watch as he grunts under the weight of the two giant bags of cat food that he hefts over each shoulder before dropping them unceremoniously into the cart. “Hurry up.”

I don’t budge, crossing my arms and fixing Trevor with a cold glare. “ _I_ give a fuck.” Trevor stops dead in his tracks from where he had begun to stalk past me in long strides, pulling a very military-esque about-face and looking at me with a surprisingly neutral expression. I’m not sure if that’s a bad sign, given that he is usually so transparent, but I don’t turn back at this point. “Wait right _here_ ,” I point sternly to the bagging area beside me. “while I pay for this. You’re not pulling this shit with _me_ , babe.”

Trevor blinks a couple times, his jaw slack and his tongue working against the back of his front teeth, and then I’m unable to meet his stare any longer. I quickly swipe my card and go through the motions, not bothering to find out the price for this bounty of menial items before I sign over my money for it. I find myself a bit wobbly and cold, the rush of bossing around the man who takes no orders is lifting me high and I’m simultaneously frightened and exhilarated by it. Part of me is preparing for Trevor to explode into hateful fire behind me, taking everyone in this fucking depressing supermarket along with him. But he doesn’t—instead he does exactly what I told him to and he does it without a word, watching with that thoughtful expression as I bag up my items and load them into the cart. 

I find this all a bit miraculous, especially considering that there is nothing I’d rather do then get the hell out of this place and back home to Gran—I’ve been away from her for too long and it is making me itch with imagined disasters. This peculiar sort of peace lasts about as long as it takes for me to get myself together and ready to exit the store, before the older man in line behind us shatters the calm by sighing pointedly at the pair of us in exasperation. 

It is then that Trevor snatches up a bag of cat food from the cart where he had previously dropped both sacks and he is almost a blur as he pushes his entire body-weight into the act of slamming the cat food point blank into the older man’s head, sending little fish-shaped kibbles raining down all over the shelf of candy beside us and onto the floor in a very audible avalanche.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so so very sorry that this update took so long. I'm trying to update regularly, but sometimes I get caught up in life/need some time to gather my inspiration/work. I hope you all understand and know that I won't abandon this work, I just might have some update times longer than others. :) 
> 
> On another note... Thank you for all this LOVE. This is fucking awesome, ladies and gents, and it is so encouraging. <3


	8. Vulnerable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Trevor get one thing straight.

Though really I know it was blind luck that allowed Trevor and I to walk out of the Checkout! without a hair of trouble— _not_ Trevor’s keen criminal sixth sense, I still felt a bit resentful over it and tried to rationalize it with facts: it’s late, and so there aren’t a lot of people to witness Trevor’s assault on the older gentleman, who was knocked out almost instantly when the bag of cat food had sent his skull careening into the mini fridge beside the self-checkout that housed sodas and bottles of water. I had watched, frozen in shock, as Trevor had let out a howl of rage and stomped on the man’s 12-pack, causing the damaged beer cans to angrily hiss out carbonated liquid all over the scene, mixing with the blood leaking from the man’s head-wound and the now soggy kibbles of cat food. The beer had soaked one of my pant legs like a sprinkler, lukewarm and pungent, before Trevor had grabbed my arm in one hand and pushed the squeaking cart in the other. 

Once at his truck, Trevor pushed me towards the passenger side door before stalking back around to the bed of his vehicle. I could hear the heavy thud of my one remaining bag of cat food land in the bed before I had glanced over and watched Trevor lift up the entire shopping cart with a growl and upend all of my items to join the cat food, the sound of clattering plastic containers skittering across ridged metal jarring in the otherwise quiet parking lot.

I didn’t say anything when he pulled out of the lot and back onto the road, not necessarily because I was afraid to or even because I was too stunned—I had seen my fair share of hot-heated men performing feats of inexplicable and uncalled for violence, and this was no exception. More than anything, sitting now in the mostly-silent passenger side of Trevor’s Bodhi, I feel a strange sort of disappointment. But why? Did I expect anything less from a man that I’m almost certain is a drug-dealer, and the very least a criminal? No, I didn’t. 

I suppose it’s that feeling you get when you buy a new lamp, only to discover that you have no light-bulbs when you come home: _oh, this isn’t going to **work**_. This is a _**disappointment**_. I don’t know what exactly I thought Trevor would be, but after having him lift something off of my shoulders with his dogged honesty, only to send it crashing back down onto my spine with that unnecessary outburst, felt really fucking brutal. But shit, what difference is this from anything else? I thought coming back here that Quentin wasn’t using anymore, that he had some mediocre yet stable job that was supporting him—safely and like a _normal_ person. I thought that maybe Gran wasn’t as bad as I remembered when I left for Los Santos four years ago—no, she was _worse_. I roll my eyes when I actually start listening to my own thoughts, wondering why I feel the need to throw myself a pity party when I know from experience that it doesn’t solve anything. Only makes my throat feel raw. 

“When’s your birthday?”

I am startled by Trevor’s break of the silence, enough so that it takes me a moment to notice that we are slowing to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Trevor leans forward, turning the truck off and leaving the keys clinging softly together as he stares at me—a bit too casually for my taste. 

The quiet that ensues from my lack of response isn’t quite… awkward? But it _is_ pregnant with confusion from both sides. Trevor doesn’t seem to find his question odd, even after the scene that he pulled back in the store—he still smells of beer and blood, in fact, a very _distinct_ fucking scent. I stare at him, trying very hard to remain neutral, but find the fact that he is trying to sweep his little outburst under the rug to be really disgusting. Like he’s _allowed_ to act in such a way because, hey, he’s fucked up and what _else_ is he supposed to do? 

“What—,” I begin, my voice cutting off involuntarily, before I begin shaking my head slowly to clear my thoughts. “What the _fuck_ do you care?”

Trevor blinks, recoiling physically from my tone and touching his large hand to his chest. “ _Uhh_ —! W-what’s with the _attitude_ , Jack, I’m just trying to make fucking _conversation_!”

“Jesus.” I put my face in my hands, feeling _so tired_ all of a sudden. Attempting to think of the last time that I had been through so many different emotions in one night sends my head _reeling_ , and soon enough the tell-tale ache of a migraine begins to thump at the base of my skull. 

“What? … _WHAT_?” Trevor barks, beginning to breathe loudly through his nose in his mounting anger. I shake my head at him, looking stubbornly forward at the bloated moon balancing on the towering tree line before us— _it’s late, shit_. “Ohh… I see now. Mhmm, _right_ —you’re punishing me because of _what I did for you_ back there, aren’t you?”

My head continues to shake back and forth, unable to process his outrageous thought progressions that somehow lead to these absurd ideas. _Helping **me**_? I dig my thumbnail into my index finger, trying to pinpoint my anger into the pain. “You didn’t do that for me.”

“Yes I fucking—… _AGH_!” Trevor slams his palms into his steering wheel, breathing hard before he leans his elbow against the driver’s side door, pressing his fist to his mouth. “Mm… you are just _**fucking**_ —gah, _fuck_! Aren’t you? Yes, you _fucking **are**_.”

“What are you _talking_ about?” 

“You… are afraid of _me_.” He points hard at me before jabbing his thumb into his chest, most of his expression shrouded in shadow, making it hard to read. “I _knew it_ , back at the bar when you refused to fucking drink around me—,”

“Wait, wait.” I interrupt, turning in my seat and momentarily forgetting my exhaustion in lieu of this new development. _That… makes sense._ “You think that… I was _afraid_ to drink around you?”

“Yes, yes, fucking… _YES_!” Trevor is rippling with discomfort and rage, unable to hold a position for longer than a few seconds as he tears at the environment around him. There is _heat_ emanating from him, burning and impossible to ignore as I shrink back against the car door. I realize abruptly that he is _ashamed_ of himself. “I see it, I—I _**know**_ it when I see it! But then, you know, I guess I just thought after you saw me with my piece that you were okay, but—no.” His voice is raw and I can see him swallow before sighing out shakily. “N—… no.”

I think on this, my heart aching a bit for this miserable man and his insurmountable paranoia. It is with some shock that I realize that I had _forgotten_ about the incident in the bar with the handgun—had it been because of my attack? Had I glossed over the events out of habit to spare myself future embarrassment? Was it adrenaline? I’d seen guns too many times to mention growing up; they were as commonplace as the grimy Persian rug in the living room of my childhood home. I had grown up not fearing them, at least when they were lying dormant in a gun cabinet or were being used to destroy empty beer cans. They were just objects, I had always thought, and supposed that my brain had rationalized it in such a manner—perhaps in order to keep calm during an attack. 

“Trevor.” I come back to the moment, risking a loss of limb by reaching across the space between us and laying my palm flat against his tense shoulder. “I am _not **afraid**_ of you.” I say it slowly and firmly, pausing for a moment to listen to his unsteady breathing and I unconsciously give his shoulder a squeeze. “The only reason I chose not to drink was because I _don’t drink_. Period. Not because I was scared of what would… _happen_ if I was drunk around you.”

Trevor grips the steering wheel as if to brace himself upon hearing my words, and he wrings his hands against it hard enough to make the material squeak under his sweaty palms. He is growling a bit on each exhale like an ornery beast, twitching a bit as his knee bounces heavily with radiant energy. It is a while before he responds and I keep my hand on him—trying to be an anchor as he was for me. “ _Why_ weren’t you afraid of the gun?” 

“Geez, I know you think I’m just some—I don’t know, some _LS drone_ or something…” I laugh, blinking hard from my suddenly stinging eyes. Trevor peeks almost sheepishly at me from the corner of his eye, his head hanging a bit and remaining shadowed to my scrutiny. “But I don’t know, babe, none of this is really _new_ to me, I guess. I grew up around guns and learned—rightly or wrongly—to not be afraid of them.” I catch myself tracing my thumb along his collarbone a minute too late, immediately halting my ministrations and withdrawing my hand inelegantly back to my lap. “Look—I think you’re a mean bastard. And other things too, but I won’t list them; that’s a bit shitty, you know, and I don’t want to make you feel worse—,” 

“Get to the _point_.” Trevor grumbles, visibly tensing in the embers of his fury that had not yet been smothered by my reassurance. 

“ _Okay_. Okay.” I sigh, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. “What I’m trying to say is that I—well, I think you are… let’s say fun. You are fun.” I nod, finding that to be the kindest possible way to put it to this delicate man. _Delicate, how unfitting_ , I think as I look him over when he leans back in his seat and into the moonlight. “Even if you are a bit… _abrasive_?”

“Huh.” He grunts, running his hands up his face and into his thinning hair, the action audible from the calluses on his hands and the harsh five o'clock shadow on his face. “Fun, eh? You… think I’m _fun_.” He wiggles his fingers sarcastically in the air like jazz-hands at the word.

“I guess I should also say fun _ny_.” I add, gaining a loud snort from him, and I glance over at him with a mild frown. “Ha-ha funny, I mean. You make me laugh. I _need_ to laugh these days, trust me.”

Trevor faces me fully for the first time, his features scrunched up into a steely scowl that I suppose could be a wall for him, a precaution—it is an expression that fractures and slowly fades into his thinking-face with the longer he looks at me. To alleviate the sudden heavy atmosphere that envelops us, I smile at him, the expression turning warm and genuine when I realize that I’m telling the truth—he makes me laugh—and not laugh _at_ him, either. I’m not trying to make him feel better out of pity—in fact, I don’t find myself pitying him or even feeling sorry for him necessarily. I more so realize that I’d very much like to understand him. My intuition tells me that very few people have attempted to do that service to him, and that makes a stab of anger strike my heart.

We are a bit caught up in each other’s faces, trying to soak in each feature and angle in order to decode any tiny emotion etched in. The air around us is thick and tingly—not unlike the feeling of waiting for your adolescent boyfriend to make the first move back in high school. _Will he or won’t he? Will I have to?_ I don’t know exactly what we are waiting for now, for it is certainly not of a romantic nature. No, it’s intense and provocative but in an outlandish way. I lean the side of my head against my headrest as his eyes travel along the length of my neck, his tongue working thoughtfully into the inside of his cheek. 

“My birthday is May 15th.” I say softly, smiling a bit crookedly as his eyes dart back up to meet mine. “Think I should rent a bounce house?”

My mild chuckle forces a half-hearted smile onto his face, his eyes rolling a bit before he looks back to me pensively, eyes narrowed and mouth crooked from a forgotten smile. He quietly watches me laugh at my own silly jest, adjusting his position to drape his arm around the back of his headrest. Trevor continues to watch me for a while after I’ve gone quiet; I can feel his eyes on me as my expression turns sour in discomfort before I reach down the front of my shirt and into my bra where I pull out a few smelly pieces of cat food. “Gross.” I frown, snorting in amusement as I turn to flick the little kibbles out the window.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” His voice is quiet, almost as if he were asking a very personal question. Which, after thinking on it for a moment, I suppose it could very well be. I look back to him and can feel how my face softens at the sight of his hesitant expression. For as much as he teases and picks and makes fun, for as much as he screams and lashes and burns, I can see that he is as vulnerable as I have _ever_ felt—perhaps even more so. I don’t know this man’s life, but I know what it’s made of him.

“I don’t need to be afraid.” I nearly whisper, unable to summon a stronger tone. “Right?”

Trevor keeps his eyes on me even as he reaches for the ignition and revs up his Bodhi, bringing the antique piece of shit roaring to life. I feel a tingle at the sound of the mighty truck matched with the intensity of Trevor’s stare, pinning me to the car door behind me. “You aren’t afraid of me— _but_ …”

“But…” I nod, deciding to be honest. “I’m just a bit—disappointed, I guess I could say. I thought you’d be different.”

“Different than _what_?” Trevor asks a bit bitterly, reaching forward to fiddle with the heater on his dashboard, flicking the vents to unload hot air chiefly in my direction. I feel a small lurch in my gut, giddy and light, at the thoughtful gesture. 

“I was hoping you wouldn’t hurt that man in the store.” I reply, my eyes rapidly absorbing his expression. “I know what it’s like to have a temper, and I know that you can’t control yours.”

“Control it? Huh.” He shakes his head a bit in mild disbelief, scratching nonchalantly at the underside of his jaw. I can hear his nails grating against his stubble. “Well, Jack, what if I don’t _want_ to fucking control it? Hm?”

“That’s what I mean.” I say with a sigh, fighting the urge to rub my tired eyes. “I’m not scared of you, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m not hyper-fucking-aware that you are a _criminal_ with a berserk temper.”

“A _criminal_?” Trevor mock-gasps with a hand held primly to his dropped jaw, then looking at me as if I’m a bit slow. He laughs a bit loudly at the sight of my glower as a car on the road beside us whizzes by. “You are _such_ a fucking princess.”

“Why?” I frown, leaning forward a bit to soak up more of the heater’s comfort. “I have to assume—by association with my cousin—that you _are_ a criminal.”

“Nice observation, poindexter.” He mocks me in a stereotypical nasally nerd-esque tone. “But wait, wait—your cousin? _Chef_? You think _I’m_ corrupt by association with _him_?”

I blink at him. “No, I’m sure you were a _real badass_ long before him, don’t worry.” I hold my hands up in mock-innocence, feeling a bit pissy from his condescending tone. “I just know Quen’s past, I lived it on the sidelines, and if you two are working together—,”

“Uh—yeah, _actually_ , Jack? I’m his _boss_.” 

“ _…Okay then_ … If you’re his _boss_ , then I have to assume that he’s in some shit again.” I say, grinding my teeth a bit in annoyance. Trevor pulls back onto the main road, gravel and dust shooting out behind us from the giant tires of the Bodhi. 

“In some _shit_?” Trevor guffaws obnoxiously, looking between me and the road in an attempt to balance his attention. “Wh—what _the fuck_ are _you_ supposed to be—huh? Some… some troubled youth counselor? A young, street-wise cop from some fucking cheese-filled action movie?”

My ears burn from his sardonic tone as I cross my arms heavily on my chest, bracing my feet once more on the dashboard in preparation for an oncoming turn in the road. “Shut up, Trevor, this isn’t funny. He’s my cousin.”

“Yeah, and he’s my _employee_ , sugar.” He replies loudly over the rush of the wind, looking both ways down a street before making a right towards Grapeseed. “Jack…” His voice quiets down conspiratorially as we roll up to a stop sign. The Bodhi rumbles impatiently as we come to a halt and Trevor uses the opportunity to lean over close to me—uncomfortably so. “Are you trying to get me to _spill the beans_ on old Chef? Hm? Oh— _Jacky_ … that’s rather naughty of you.”

“No, I’m not.” I sound defensive and it makes Trevor’s eyes absolutely sparkle. “I’m _not_ , really, you ass. I’d rather hear the truth from him. But!” I hold up a finger in an addendum, turning to face Trevor and his wicked smile. “I’d be an idiot if I didn’t put the clues together. I know that Quentin is cooking again.” Trevor raises an eyebrow at me, his smile crooked and very much amused and I _hate_ him for it—for making light of something that kills me. “I _know_.”

“Oh, you _know_?” Trevor laughs, abruptly pressing on the gas pedal and jolting me backward in my seat as he continues on down the road. “Jesus, Jack, why do _you_ give a fuck? Is it _hurting you_? Is—is it, oh… I don’t know, hurting your _Granny-dearest_ when she takes that fucking check to the bank?” He glances over to drink in my disgruntled expression. “Nah, _didn’t think so_.”

“It _does_ hurt me.” I reply, blinking hard a few times as my eyes begin to cloud with tears of frustration. “Quentin is important to me. _Beyond_ important. I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s—… if he’s just going to start this shit all over again.”

I can feel Trevor looking at me as I wipe away the tears that finally fall, and I’m thankful that he doesn’t comment on it. Instead he sighs a bit loudly, leaning his elbow on his car door and then leaning his head in his hand to support it. I hear him scratching at his scalp as he sucks his teeth. “What if… What if I made an _amendment_ to Chef’s—er, _contract_?”

Sniffing back the snot loudly in my nose, I look up to Trevor as he stares in concentration out the windshield and into the flood of light that his obnoxious headlights unleash onto the road before us. “What do you mean?”

“He, uh—… Oh! He can’t use on the job!” Trevor finally blurts out, beaming over at me. “Huh? Yeah, that sounds good. ‘Course, it’s none of your god damn _business_ what a _grown man_ does with his time and technically he can still smoke up at all other times of the day, but hey—sounds professional, yeah? How’s that, Jacky, hm? Feel better?”

I swallow thickly, wiping my nose on the back of my arm and nodding in what I’m sure is quite a pitiful sight. Trevor continues to glance frequently over at me every few seconds as he waits for my reaction, his tongue worrying against his bottom lip. 

“Take a right here, after the Alamo Fruit Market.” I instruct meekly, already spotting the light from Granny’s house up the hill. It’s easy to tell that Trevor is a bit miffed that I’m not reacting as gratefully as he expected me to, but I stay quiet, waiting until he pulls over to the side of the road in front of the Jackson house, the porch light behind us illuminating his peculiar eyes vibrantly. 

“Did you hear what I fucking said?” Trevor snaps at me, his temper flicking off and on like a light switch—as I had become accustomed to. He shifts the Bodhi into park and twists in his seat to face me, his mouth open and his brow drawn together in confusion. “I’m trying to be _nice_ , Jack-off. Isn’t that what you want? Huh?”

Without really thinking about it—other than having the realization that I truly felt compelled to do this—I lean forward and reach wordlessly for his hand. Chastely and inexplicably, I press my lips to the back of Trevor’s hand, kissing his terrible scorpion tattoo that is scrawled messily on his skin. I lean back, holding his hand in both of mine, and look up to observe his dazed expression. His back is pressed against his car door, as if he had braced himself to be struck and had desperately tried to escape. Trevor’s jaw is slack and his eyes are wide in disbelief, they search my face frantically for an explanation but I don’t really have any. I can only try to convey my gratitude through my own expression, smiling softly at him. 

“Thank you.” Is what I say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to apologize if this story is a bit too dialogue-heavy and slowly paced. I should warn everyone: this is NOT an action story. It's a bit of a snoozer, I know, but I really love to write dialogue and to develop my OC's as much as possible. :) Anyway, if anyone has any feedback on that subject, I'd be welcome to hearing it! And any other kind of feedback, of course. Also I have to apologize if there are any typos in this chapter in particular. I was in one of those modes where I was excited to write but I was also zonked out tired. Whoops! 
> 
> As always, thank you millions for the support and love. Makes me soar with happiness. <3 <3 <3


	9. Judgmental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Quentin hash it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooo I'm back :) While I do admit that this is not an action story, from this point on things will start to pick up! I felt that these first chapters needed to lay down a foundation, because ultimately this fic is about _Pandora_ 's life and Trevor's _piece_ in it. Anyway, blah blah blah, right? Sorry!  <3 <3

“Pandora!”

I drop Trevor’s hand immediately and lean away from him, looking quickly over my shoulder and meeting eyes with Quentin. He is steaming as he stands waiting at the top of the porch steps, his arms crossed stiffly over his chest. I frown, feeling very exhausted by a night too full of confrontation and the prospect of even more from Quentin, before I quickly scramble out of my seat and push open my car door. The door groans in protest of being opened with such force but I pay it no mind, jumping to the ground and not sparing Trevor another glance as I lean in to grab my purse from the car floor. It sounds silly and perhaps absurdly sentimental, but I find myself wanting to preserve what is probably—and hopefully—my last image of Trevor. It might sound a bit cowardly, but I don’t think I want to see him again, I don’t know if I can handle a night like this once more. He makes me think too much about myself and _I don’t want that_ —it is not a welcome concept. So I try to hold the image of his innocent and purely untouched expression of shock after I kissed his hand—a look that was completely free of the malice and paranoia that has soaked his soul. 

I jog as much as my lungs will permit around the back of the truck, seeing Trevor spin around in his seat to watch me but I don’t allow him to meet my gaze. I lean forward, scooping up as much as I can of my purchased items and shoving them into my purse—ditching the loofah due to its position too far back in the truck bed—and lean forward to drag the cat food towards me. I grunt from its weight but manage to find an appropriate enough position to carry it back to the house. It isn’t long before I’m through the gate that I hear Trevor’s truck rev up ferociously before he peels away from the side of the road, sending dust curling down the road towards the Alamo Sea. I can imagine that he is maybe a titch angry with me, judging from his dramatic exit—though I try to reassure myself that maybe he’s just keeping with the theme of his overall dangerous driving technique. _It doesn’t matter_ , I remind myself. _Trevor will **not** be a part of your life. You don’t **want** him to be. He can’t_. 

All of my self-assurances are silenced as I approach the front porch, finally looking up into Quentin’s hard stare. I don’t back down—I won’t grant him the satisfaction of seeming sheepish or apologetic. I could be cruel and remind him that 5 or so years ago our roles were reversed—it had been me and Gran waiting up until the late hours of the night/wee hours of the morning, waiting for any sign of Quentin after not hearing from him for long periods of time. I could do it, but I don’t. Instead I huff out a strained breath in order to hold the bag of cat food out to him, waiting for him to take it. “Well? Help me, this is heavy.”

Quentin swallows and heaves a sigh out through his nose, giving me a small shake of his head before he turns on his heel and walks inside. The screen door snaps noisily behind his back, leaving me standing there like an asshole with a stupid bag of cat food, mosquitos buzzing around the back of my neck. “Fucker.” I sigh under my breath, my ears heating up uncomfortably as I make my way inside. 

As soon as I’m in the house I look for Gran in her recliner—she isn’t there even though her music still plays softly and serenely in the background, ever-present. Her program is playing on the TV set, muted and casting a soothing gray gloom around the room—a TV lighting up a quiet room had always been one of those comfort triggers that sent a pleasant tickle up my spine. Nostalgia, I suppose. That all ends as soon as I turn to Quentin where he leans against the kitchen counter. I soak in his exhausted and very disapproving expression. I try to catch a glimpse of his pupils—just in case. He doesn’t look high and isn’t acting like it, though I know that he has used enough in his life to be able to act normal under the influence. _Under the influence_. Maybe Trevor wasn’t exaggerating—that sounds a bit too insufferably ‘conservative suburban mom’ of me. 

“Where’s Gran?” I ask, letting my heavy bag fall to the ground to lean up against one of the kitchen cabinets. I walk to the fridge, opening it up and reaching for the water purifier that I had bought Granny despite her initial protests— _oh phooey to that, Jack! What’s wrong with the tap_? I fill a glass with the icy water, taking a sip and wincing a bit at its extreme cold. 

“She’s in bed.” He replies, steepling his fingers and staring hard at me over the tips of them. “She called me an hour ago asking me to get cat food.”

“Yeah, she asked me too.” I nod in the direction of the bright purple bag leaning next to my purse on the floor. 

“Gran also wanted to know where _Lilibeth_ was.” Quentin continues, ignoring me, and narrows his eyes at me pointedly for a moment. “I drove over here to make sure she was okay.”

“She’s not an invalid, Quen.” I snap, feeling an overwhelming rush of defensive sourness consume my gut. “You think she can’t handle being on her own for a few hours?”

Quentin blinks in shock at me, rolling his lips testily and shaking his head. He sighs, more forcefully this time, before looking back up at me with a critical shine in his eyes. “You really have changed, PJ.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My brow is starting to smart from how hard my face is drawn into a frown. I shove my face into my glass of water and force down a couple of gulps to stamp down the prickly hot sensation I feel in my tear-ducts. 

“It means that LS has kind of fucked you over, sensitivity-wise.” He replies. I _know_ Quentin, he very rarely says things merely to _hurt_ like I often do—he’s thoughtful, if not a little overly passive and spacey sometimes. In the past, when I needed a reality check or advice, I’d go see Quen. I lost that temporarily when he got into crystal, but he was still _there_. As much as this pains me to hear, my ears secretly perk at his opinion. “Sure, you got help with your temper when you saw that therapist, and that’s great. You needed that. But—shit, man, you’re just like… kind of self-absorbed now. And spiteful as shit.”

Just because I care about his opinion doesn’t mean I have to agree. I scrunch my nose hard enough to hold back the tears, my mouth hot with saliva as I force down some more water to cope with this. “So you’re saying that me quitting the job I worked at for four years and moving back to take care of my Grandmother who is suffering from dementia is worth nothing towards my character? Right, Quen, yeah—that sounds so fucking self-absorbed of me.”

“Yeah, only because you left when you decided you couldn’t handle us anymore in the first place. Now you feel like you owe us something, like you can just show back up and play caretaker again.” Quentin answers calmly, watching me carefully from the other side of the counter. “That’s all well and good; a part of me really wanted you to go so that you’d have a chance to make something of yourself. But you didn’t have to _disappear_ , PJ. You barely talked to Gran for 5 years, didn’t even _speak_ to me, and you left your mom to rot. Have you even told Lilibeth you’re back in Grapeseed?”

The tears that fell stung harshly and felt starkly distinct rolling down my cheeks. Quentin knows me, knows that I can’t help but cry and that it isn’t some cue for him to lay off. _Oh, she’s **crying** , I’ve gone too far. She can’t **handle** this. She’s too **weak**_. No, I’ve always loved that about him. He knows that there is more than meets the eye.

“I’m just got tired of no one getting better no matter how hard I tried.” I reply weakly, knowing him to be right and feeling it like a sharp stab in my chest. I hadn’t told anyone of the guilt that haunts me—that I gave up my family to feel more comfortable in a soulless city. But _he_ knows, of course. “I haven’t talked to mom in a long time, alright? But it’s not like you’re any better in that regard.”

“Didn’t say I was.” He shrugs, taking a sip of a beer that I hadn’t noticed. Now that I look around, I see two other empty bottles near him. That doesn’t shock me, doesn’t upset me either I suppose. Just makes me feel a bit odd—guilty, even. Quen drinks beer when he needs to relax. “I fucked Dot over though, that’s different. She doesn’t want shit to do with me because I went too far. You are _good_ , Jack—you and Gran are the best of this family. I just don’t want you to turn your nose up too high at the rest of us. Gran did that her whole life and now she regrets it because the family won’t give her the time of day.”

“I’m not, you ass.” I hiss at him, can see myself going through the steps of throwing my glass of water at his head—I’ve done it to him in the past, I can even see the scar from my last successful hit on the side of his skull. I was fifteen when I did that to him. “Just because I lived in LS for a few years doesn’t mean I’m some holier-than-thou cuntbag. I have standards and opinions, _sorry_ if I live by them.”

“Sure, that’s fine. Just don’t dump on the rest of us for taking the opportunities that we have.” His stare doesn’t let up and neither do I. Quentin watches as I throw back the last of my water before going back to the purifier for more. “I’m not trying to piss on you, okay? You’re my family. You are important, probably the most important person to me other than Gran. And I’m proud as all hell of you, Jacky.” He pauses, leisurely tracing a circle in the air with the bottom of his beer bottle, letting the carbonated liquid swish around in the glass. “I just want you to knock the judgmental shit off. You just can’t show up after years of barely any contact and expect that to be okay.”

“Yeah, _ditto_ , babe.” I glare up at him. “And let me just remind you, before you go off on me about tonight, that you are definitely _not_ my father. So no lectures, please?” I smile acridly at him. “ _Thanks_.”

“Thank fuck for that.” I ignore the jab, feeling horribly sore over the realization that maybe my absence really _had_ left a mark on my relationships with Gran and Quentin. Granny would never say so, of course—that’s just not her way, it would be ‘impolite’. Quentin, however, has always been honest. “That doesn’t matter though, I’m older than you and I care about you, so I’m going to tell you this once and I really, really hope you listen to me, Jack.” 

I look up at him, sniffing back some snot and blinking a few times to clear my eyes as the tears begin to quell. I’m a bit startled by Quentin’s grave expression, his eyes harsh in their lack of any sort of jest or lightness. 

“Do not— _ever_ —hang out with Trevor again.” He says quietly, almost harshly, and continues to bore his eyes into me. “I only let it happen tonight in the hopes that you’d be creeped out enough to stay away for good.”

“I thought…” I trail off, wondering why his warning hurts my feelings—as if he were insulting _me_ personally instead of some guy I just spent the weirdest night of my life with. “Aren’t you two friends, or something?”

“You could say that.” Quentin’s expression lightens a touch and he takes a thoughtful sip of his beer. “He’s… got _a lot_ of shit, PJ.” I could’ve said: _yeah, no shit_. But then what do I really know? I know Trevor has major issues, but I don’t know much beyond that. Is he a drug addict? He sure looks like one. Is he a rapist? I don’t think so, but it’s not like these things are always obvious. A murderer? The thought sends a shiver up and down my spine. “Trevor draws you in, Jack. He’s got that… _thing_ about him, trust me, I know. But you can’t let him get his claws in you, just promise me that?”

“Quentin.” I groan out in annoyance, letting my head loll back. My curly hair tickles my shoulders, sending goose-bumps along my arms. “Didn’t you just preach at _me_ to not be so judgmental?”

“This isn’t a joke. Do not defend him; you don’t know about the things that he’s done.” Quentin points the neck of his beer at me sternly. “What did you two even do, anyway? Please tell me it was at least PG.”

“Ew, Quentin.” I scoff a bit too earnestly, feeling my ears heat along with my entire face. “He’s… not my type.”

“Yeah, ‘spose that’s true…” Quentin admits. He looks me up and down then, snorting a bit. “You’re not his, either.”

I turn away to open the fridge, hiding my frown as I bend over to retrieve the cherry pie that Gran had bought Quentin earlier today. What is that supposed to mean, ‘not his type’? Trevor seemed to have no qualms with _my type. **Please** , don’t fucking get **self-conscious** over this. You aren’t attracted to him either, so what’s the deal_? I swallow thickly, turning back to Quentin with pie in hand. I plop it onto the counter in front of him, observing his neutral expression with an irritated pout. “Here. _Gran_ thinks you deserve this.”

“Ooh, a pie.” Quentin pipes up mildly, smiling at me despite my petty attitude. He traces the shiny cartoon cherries on the label. “Cherry, score.”

“Want it heated up?” I asked, retrieving a plate and cutting a thick piece before tossing it haphazardly into the microwave. 

“Yes, please.” He answers politely, burping quietly under his breath with the last swig of his beer. “You okay, J?”

“After being verbally abused the entire night by two drug dealers?” I pipe up in a pseudo-cheerful tone, opening the microwave before it beeped loudly and plopping the plate in front of Quentin. “I feel freaking _relaxed_.”

“I’m not a drug dealer.” Quentin replies simply, though I can hear the slightest break of touchiness in that cool exterior. 

“You’re cooking, though.” I accuse, leaning forward directly across from him on the counter. He doesn’t pause in his consumption of the pie but he does focus his eyes on me, watching to see if I’m bluffing. “I know that, Quentin. I’m positive of it.”

“How?” He challenges mildly after a moment of thought, chewing slowly and deliberately. 

I decide quickly to lie. It’s dirty and Quentin doesn’t deserve it, but I need to know the truth. “Trevor told me.” Quentin’s eyes narrow, so I roll my eyes and add. “Off-handedly, he obviously didn’t know that you were keeping it a secret. He mentioned crystal and I put the pieces together.”

“Hmm…” Quentin nods slowly, not taking his eyes off of mine as he spears another mouthful. “That’s interesting.”

“So, are you using too? Are you selling?” I continue—I need everything laid out and Quentin knows that, and he also knows that I won’t stop bugging him until I know everything. “Or… are you just cooking?”

Quentin sighs, perhaps in defeat or maybe in annoyance. At this point I don’t really care; I simply lean in from curiosity, watching him take two more bites before he shrugs half-heartedly. “I’m… only cooking. I _have_ used since getting sober, I admit… but it’s not like it used to be, Jack, I think you can tell that much just from looking at me.”

I nod, able to admit it even if this whole thing makes me fucking _livid_. We both keep silent for a while, in the mean time I too get a slice of pie and a glass of milk. As we eat we both think on each other, I bet—he on how I’ve apparently changed and me on how he’s stayed the same. Both are equally depressing. 

“I’m… sad about that, Quentin.” I tell him and I can see the way he swallows thickly, as if he is trying not to show the pain and embarrassment I know he feels—I felt that same pain not too long ago when he laid some reality on me. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day you called me when I was living in LS, to tell me that you were three months sober. You remember how hard I cried? _Really_ cried.” I know I’m cutting him deep, I can see it in the way his face contorts. Childishly, I mentally declare this an eye for an eye. “That day it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.”

Quentin sighs, letting his forehead fall down onto the counter in front of him. I revel in that, turning the tables on him—even if that is a bit spiteful of me, as he had pointed out. I take both of our plates and set them in the dishwasher before leaning down to pick up my purse. I don’t spare Quentin another glance before I’m padding barefoot across the living room and disappearing into my room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright just a warning: I am currently planning on living abroad for the rest of the year. I will continue writing, I repeat I WILL CONTINUE WRITING! :) However, my updating schedule might be sporadic. That's to say, updates won't necessarily be farther apart, but it won't be on a set schedule. Maybe I'll update two days a part or two weeks a part, see what I mean? Either way, I'm sticking this one out, just wanted to let everyone know!
> 
> I'm also excited to be at this point in the story. I loved writing these first chapters, but really it's a bridge for what's to come! :) Anywayyyy thank you so much for the love and the feedback. <3 <3


	10. Timebomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora and Gran have a guest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi... AHEM... I'm back! Still abroad, living like a poor, starved writer, and thinking A LOT about this story and it's beautifully loyal readers. I wrote a relatively large chunk, so I will be annoying and release it in bits. <3 <3

My car door slams shut behind me, muting the sounds of the outside with blunt finality—distant dog barks, wailing seagulls, and the seedy buzz of spring cicadas. The little Ingot that I’ve had for eight years is hot and stuffy from a long day of sitting in the overbearing sun; the air inside here seems thick enough to cut with a knife. Even so I sigh in relief of the end of my work day—the end of my first week at my new job at the Sandy Shores clinic, in fact. I start up my car after a few stuttering failed attempts, wincing a bit at the rush of blistering air that gushes from the vents. It always takes a few minutes to get semi-cold air, so I settle for simply rolling down my windows as I begin making my way to Grapeseed. I think over my experience with this new job—it was basically the same position that I had left back at St. Fiacre Hospital, yet Sandy Shores was an entirely different world than Los Santos. 

Walking into work the first day had been about as discombobulated as I had initially been preparing for. First it had taken me about twenty minutes to _find_ my department’s office, and even then it felt like I had mistakenly walked into a cesspool where medical documents and messily scrawled doctor’s notes came to gather dust and die slowly. My co-workers were a lobotomized bunch, most not bothering to hide their Solitaire matches and avid LifeInvader stalking habits when the manager had attempted to assimilate me into the ranks—a manager whose personality and constant giggles were more sugar than genuine warmth. I got through it though, and I suppose that was all that mattered—working only 20 hours a week wasn’t too bad either. 

I nod along with the music that warbles a bit unsteadily from my ancient CD player, breathing in the wild wind that passes through my hair from the open window. This is dangerous, I realize—gulping down lungfuls of spring-infested warm air. It’s playing with fire, really, but sometimes I just want to _breathe_ , no matter the cost. And so I relish in my moment of indulgence, letting out a steady groan of relief as I squint at the heat-distorted horizon in the distance. Feeling a bit sugar-deprived, I pop open the glove box and fish around through the various papers and discarded receipts until my fingers grasp the half empty box of neon red licorice that I like to keep on hand. I grab a couple of pieces, thumbing the warm candy as I smile faintly at the _tut-tut-tut_ ’s of a nearby plane beginning it’s take off. I duck my head to watch it’s ascent into the sky.

 

As a kid I had always enjoyed being so close to the McKenzie Field Hangar during summers visiting Gran in Grapeseed and I feel a tug of nostalgia now as I see it coming up in the distance, the large building rusted with age. I distinctly remember spending dry afternoons lying on the back lawn with mom while Gran fried up the lumpia that mom had pieced together in the morning. We’d spend a of couple hours tanning whilst watching the crop-dusters buzz noisily overhead, though Gran always chided us that we never needed to bake out in the sun, what with our ‘exotic complexions’. And while it was true, mom and I shared that warm golden hue, most of the community of Grapeseed had remarked upon my striking resemblance to my father. I had always wished they’d say I looked like mom; with her glossy black hair, sweet honey eyes, and her long, strong legs in her cut-off denims—I thought she was a queen without a kingdom; that perhaps she had left it back in the Philippines many years ago. 

On days like this—blistering with heat and skies glowing blue—tiny iridescent sweat bees would kiss the perspiration from our necks and the backs of our knees. Mom would whisper gossip to me in Tagalog—her breath sweet with the aftertaste of cherry popsicles. And even though I didn’t always know who or what she was talking about, I’m sure she just wanted someone to speak her language with. I swallow hard and long on that realization, my thoughts suddenly centering strongly on my mother now as I roll into the dirt driveway beside Granny’s house, the grass long since yellowed and dead from the constant treading of car wheels. 

I think about mom, up in our small little house in the hills overlooking the ocean, deeply backwoods and overwhelmingly remote. It isn’t hard to picture her there, really, for I know exactly what she is doing at this very moment: sitting in her stale-smelling old recliner, feet up with a laptop sitting on her thighs, maybe a dog or two squeezing in to soak up her warmth, and a reality show marathon blaring on in the background. I wonder briefly if she’s keeping up with her meds.

Sighing, I rub the back of my hand over my forehead to wipe away the pearling sweat before I reach tiredly into my purse in search of my cellphone. I palm the iFruit for a moment, squinting to see the screen through the sun’s light. It takes me just a few scrolls through my contacts before I see mom’s name at the very bottom of the list—or, really, ‘Z-Mom’. The ‘Z’ ensured that I wouldn’t be faced with seeing the blaring three letter word every time I searched for ‘Mexican take-out’ in my contact list. I’m sure she would be offended that I had gone out of my way to prevent myself from even _seeing_ her in my phone, for really it was just a gesture of my cowardice. 

Without thinking I jam my thumb into the name, forcing my eyes shut as I bump my hip into my car door to shut it. The phone rings ominously as I step around the clucking hens that rush towards me once I step through the front gate—the little puffy creatures follow me as I walk around the back of the house until I make it to the backyard and head towards the ancient tire swing that hangs dejectedly from a towering oak tree. 

“Hello?” Mom’s voice blares through my phone and I wince from the volume. It’s reassuring though, at least I know she’s not in one of her down-swings—when she’s feeling like herself she always shouts deafeningly loud in any phone conversation. “Pandora?”

“Hey inay.” I blurt out, the Tagalog feels sour on my tongue from neglecting it for many years. 

“Oh! Hello, hello!” Her accent is thicker than I remember, but maybe that’s just because she’s yelling. Still, just as I had suspected, I can hear the chattering of bickering reality stars in the background. “Aww, baby, what’s wrong? What you need?”

My cheeks burn at her confusion—but really, what do I expect? I don’t even remember the last time I called up mom just to talk. I email her, sure, but… _crap_. Very abruptly I recall my last argument with Quentin nearly a month ago: _You left your mom to rot. Have you even told her you’re back in Grapeseed?_ Even replaying his words in my head is enough to cause an eruption of angry, shameful heat along my ears and chest. He was right, of course. I had left mom to fade away in her hovel in the hills—I traded her in for an easier life. She doesn’t even know where I am right now. 

“No, inay, nothing like that.” I glance up as the back door creaks open. Granny peeks her head out, her wispy white hair floating along with the heated breeze that blows past. She smiles at me before noticing that I’m on the phone. She points to her ear quizzically, wordlessly asking who I am speaking to. I cover the speaker and silently mouth the word ‘MOM’. Gran’s eyes absolutely _light up_ , her mouth forming a little ‘o’ and her shaky palms reaching up to cup the sides of her cheeks. It makes me feel unworthy of mom’s attention when here is Gran beside herself at the idea that I am speaking to my mother. She waves me away fussily after realizing I need privacy, and then disappears behind the back door. I focus back on the moment. “Actually, mama, I just wanted to catch up. I haven’t talked to you for a while.”

I spot Granny watching me through the window that she sneakily opens up before she pretends to busy herself in the laundry room. Even if I hadn’t seen her do it, the sudden sound of her schmaltzy records lilting out to join the cicadas is a dead giveaway. It doesn’t matter I guess, she’ll find out what mom and I are talking about sooner or later. 

“Catch up? Mm—mm.” Mom hums and I can tell I’ve already lost her attention. As if on cue, I hear the sound of reality TV starlets screeching in the background, along with a cacophony of alarmed dog barks. “Ai, ai, ai! Shh!” She hisses, presumably at her dogs. “Catch up, baby? Hm, yes, yes you should drive down!”

I roll my eyes at that suggestion— _yeah, nice bluff mama_. I can only imagine the striking discomfort I would cause my mother if I had ever actually agreed to make the drive from LS back to my childhood home. It has always simply been pleasantries between the two of us—or, at least, ever since mom’s illness beat her. 

“Mhmm!” I nod, my tone sharp with fake enthusiasm—I am very acutely aware of Gran’s eavesdropping and I suddenly feel as if I need to pick my words very carefully, so as not to upset Granny. “Actually I’m in Blaine County, inay. I’m… at Granny’s, in fact.”

“Hm? Oh. Oh!” Mom sounds like she’s distracted from her TV show by my confession, I can hear her muttering a bit under her breath as she repeats my words in Tagalog to translate. “In Grapeseed?”

“Yeah, mama, I uh—well, I actually _forgot_ to tell you…” I trail off, looking up as a cloud of dust travels down the road in front of Gran’s house, the car causing it is speeding too fast for me to see who it is. The dust has barely settled before I hear the distant slam of a car door and then subsequently the squeak of Gran’s front door. _Quentin must be here, **great**._ I scowl, still feeling angry at him over our last argument, and I kick at a rock protruding from the hot dirt to diminish the surmounting sourness I feel at the prospect of facing him. “I’m living with Gran now, to take care of her. She’s getting worse, you know—Alzheimer’s.”

“Living there? Pah! Oh Pandora! Oh, oh…” I sigh at the sound of her disappointment. “No, no, no! What about Los Santos—?”

“Her caretaker moved to Chumash, mama.” I interrupt her, letting myself sway a bit in the tire swing. “And no, before you say it, I’m _not_ putting her in a home.”

“Pah, oh baby, so sensitive. What about your job, eh?” Her voice is getting shriller by the second. “I thought you were taking the—oh… eh, what’s that test? Hm…”

“No, I wasn’t an RN.” I wince at the sound of my impatient tone, letting my head fall forward heavily onto the tire to rest as I take a deep breath. Mom had always wanted me to be a nurse, had insisted upon it since my first day of Kindergarten when each kid had to say what they wanted to be when they grew up. Being able to tell my mother that I worked at a hospital was vague enough to keep her happy, even though on more than one occasion I had to remind her that no, I wasn’t determined enough to move past the ‘desk-job’ phase of life and onto the ‘health-worker’ part that she so desperately wanted for me. “Anyway, inay that’s not the point. I’m telling you, _mom_ , that I’m in Blaine County. What do you think about that?”

I wait and listen to the obnoxious sound of her chewing on something that I can only assume is popcorn. She’s ignoring me in favor of something on the TV or her laptop, I realize that, but I also know that I need to get through this conversation in order to feel a little bit better about myself; to be able to say that I spoke to my mother this month. It’s a bit self-centered, yes, but then again so is the relationship that I have with my mother. We are very materialistically based; whenever we do talk on the phone she asks if I need anything even if she doesn’t have the money to give—I learned at a young age not to actually take her up on any offers for help—and then when I decline she asks if I can buy her something. And that _something_ could be anything from cheap lottery tickets to six hundred dollar designer purses. She likes _stuff_ , it doesn’t matter what, as long as it brings with it the appearance of wealth. Mom is a borderline hoarder.

I grimace and pick at a broken nail on my left hand, cradling my phone between my ear and shoulder as I continue to listen to her chewing. This sort of thing—mom ignoring me in favor of her TV or computer—brings back plenty of memories of my childhood: an image comes suddenly to mind of me screaming at the top of my lungs at my mother for attention when she wouldn’t even bat an eye in my direction, her gaze glassy and uncomprehending despite my hysteria. I blink hard to erase that scene and clear my throat to get her attention. 

“Mom!” I bark, not very gently, and I can hear her grunt loudly in shock of my voice—as if she had forgotten that we were on the phone. “Inay, come on, _what do you think_?” I pause, listening to her mumble in Tagalog as she thinks up a proper answer. “I have a job here in Blaine County, if that’s what you were worrying about. I have money.” I add irritably, as an afterthought.

“Oh! Oh very good.” Mom chirps, humming in approval. I roll my eyes. “That reminds me, baby, you know I saw this commercial, yeah? I saw this commercial last night for 24 karat gold face mask that is…” She pauses, muttering to herself as I hear the clacking of keyboard keys. “Fifty nine-ninety five—,”

“Inay—hey! Mom!” I interrupt, knowing already where this conversation is headed. “I can’t afford to buy you that, um, gold mask. I’m sorry. But—I don’t know mama, I was just wondering if maybe…” My stomach clenches sorely in the sudden anxiety that rushes over me at my next words. “If—maybe I could take you up on your offer to visit?”

There is a silence on her end that mirrors my own feelings: the idea of ‘visiting’ sounds just as unappealing to her as it does to me. Our relationship doesn’t require visits, doesn’t need any physical contact whatsoever—no, that component of our bond ended when mom’s mental illness overwhelmed her beyond the point of recovery; when my temper and my anxiety and my asthma pushed her sanity over the edge and she tuned me out mentally until I was old enough to move away. What drives me to humiliate myself by proposing such a foreign concept is the part of my sense of morality that feels as if I _have_ to visit her—she is my mom, after all, I want to make sure she’s taking her meds and that her dogs are being fed regularly. 

“Oh, well… Baby I haven’t cleaned, you know—eh…” She trails off and I very suddenly feel a twinge of prickling embarrassment at being rejected, even if it had been inevitable. “I call you, eh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I call you when, okay?”

“Uh—but mom—,” I begin, recognizing her flustered, dismissive tone for what it is: she’s blocking me out. 

“Lab kita, Pandora-baby!” Mom interrupts me in a sing-song sort of tone, making a few smacking kiss-noises before the line goes dead. 

I squeeze my iFruit in my palm so hard that my hand begins to shake. “Fuck.” I hiss out through gritted teeth, my eyes burning from the angry tears that threaten to break the surface. “ _Fuck_ her.” I throw my arms up in defeat, awkwardly dismounting from the tire swing before I throw my body weight into a strong kick that sends the old, cracked tire spinning away from me. _You tried, Jack, that’s all that matters_. Throwing my purse over my shoulder with a thud, I stare down at my phone and stomp across the backyard towards the back porch. I can only imagine what Gran and Quentin will ask me when I get inside: _how did it go? Was she happy to hear from you? When are you going to visit her?_

I’m nearly to the porch when my foot catches on something protruding from the ground, sending me nearly sprawling out onto the ground. My phone flies from my hand and lands somewhere in the dry, golden grass near the porch steps. I wince at the eruption of pain in my big toe, fighting to keep my balance centered when my overly-large purse threatens to send me crashing to the earth. I look back in bewilderment in search of what tripped me, my eyes coming to rest on Granny’s old planter boxes. My face begins to smooth out from the glare that mom had left with me as recognition washes over me, followed by a sharp pinch of sorrow. _When had Granny stopped working in her garden? And why have I not noticed this until now?_

My expression softens into a frown as my eyes travel over the wooden planters my grandfather had made for Gran when they he had first built this house—remarkably they were still standing, though they were in desperate need of maintenance. I could see from here many corners where nails were poking out jaggedly from years of wear that had loosened their grip in the soft wood. The planters held remnants of squash, tomatoes, basil, and sweet peas, though now the plants are nothing but ragged brown twigs and crumpled leaves. Compost. I feel miserable suddenly, overwhelmingly so, when thinking that this image—once a bountiful and prospering garden and now ruined by neglect and lack of love—is not unlike Gran’s dementia. I fight to stamp down the tears as I find my phone in the dead grass, dusting it off and jogging up the steps and into the shelter of the air-conditioned house. 

I shove my phone into my purse as I make my way through the laundry room and out into the living room, my nose buried in my purse as I call out. “Hey Gran, sorry about that! I had to call mom—,”

“Oh! Phooey!” Gran is startled by my entrance and I look up, spotting her in the kitchen where… I freeze, my eyes landing on the imposter who leans casually against the kitchen counter—as if he owns it—with his head cocked nonchalantly over his shoulder to look at me. His filth is a stark contrast to the meticulous clean of the house he stands in and his tall, lanky body seems to disrupt the balance of this sweet little home. “Jack, you scared me half to death!”

“Hey-o, Jack-o.” Trevor greets, giving me a lazy quasi-salute with his teeth peeking out in a widespread grin. His eyes travel over my formal work-clothes curiously, his tongue working against a canine tooth thoughtfully. “What’s with the outfit?”

My mouth bobs open in the search for a response but I am momentarily unable to with my heart still fluttering in sharp surprise at the _bizarre_ image of him in _my space_ —my _safe, **clean**_ space. I can’t really think of how to properly react. I can at least observe that he isn’t holding my grandmother _hostage_ , which is a good start. In fact, now that I’m actually looking, I can see that Trevor is holding a beer and his elbows are supporting his weight on the kitchen counter—as if he were a permanent resident of this house. Gran is fixing me with a _nasty_ glare—she’s upset by how rude I’m being as far as a hostess goes, I already know. I can see that she is cutting into the latest pie that we had picked out for Quentin—blueberry. She’s… giving _Trevor_ pie. 

Still feeling as if I had stepped through a portal to another world, I swallow hard and blink rapidly a few times, looking down at my black leggings and awkwardly smoothing the jersey fabric of my oversized blouse against my thighs. “Uh—I just got off work.”

“Pandora Jackson.” Granny calls out coldly, making me wince out of habit. “Ain’t you got any manners?” Trevor looks mildly between us, taking a swig of his beer. “We have a guest, girl.”

I reach a hand up to scratch sheepishly at my scalp, dodging Trevor’s delighted gaze and instead looking down at my shoes. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Go get cleaned up, we’re having Quentin here for a chat.” Granny instructs sternly, turning away from me to retrieve the piece of blueberry pie she had put in the microwave. 

I look instantly to Trevor, trying to gauge his reaction to Granny’s mistake. He cocks his head to the side, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes at Gran’s back in thought as she fusses over his pie—he is seemingly unaffected, thankfully. I feel like I might have to attack him if his temper exploded on her—that will _not_ fly well with me. Granny searches through the freezer before hauling out the industrial-sized vanilla ice cream carton she always insists on buying, adding three scoops to Trevor’s plate. 

“ _Actually_ ,” Trevor drawls out slowly, catching Gran’s attention. “It’s _Trevor_ , gorgeous.” He practically purrs as she hands him his pie. I glare hard at the side of his face. “But! Mmm, well, for _you_? I can be _whoever_ you want me to be.”

I wince heavily at the sight of a drug-dealer hitting on my eighty-six year old grandma—who plays into his game and blushes prettily, touching a hand to her chest as she giggles with youthful grace. “Oh, well phooey! Ain’t I silly?” 

I take that as my cue to ‘clean up’, but not before I snap my fingers loudly enough to get Trevor’s attention—Gran’s hearing isn’t sharp enough to pick that up and it shows; she turns back obliviously to the ice cream carton, shuffling slowly over to the fridge to put it away. With Gran’s attention diverted and Trevor’s eyes on me, I narrow my gaze sourly at him and point a threatening finger at him before waggling it back and forth: _no funny business_. He gets the message, his cheeks bulging with pie as he scowls at me and waves me off— _don’t worry_ , he seems to say. 

I keep my eyes on him as I shuffle slowly towards the hallway, waiting until I’m out of sight before I begin to sprint as quietly as possible down the hall towards my bedroom. Once inside I slam the door shut and fall back against it heavily, silently screaming and slapping my hands tightly over my eyes. “Oh my god.” I whisper, my heart hammering in hard, precise thumps as I think over the situation I’m currently in. “Oh my _fucking god_!” I hiss, clutching my torso with my arms tightly before crumpling forward dramatically, as if I had been kicked in the gut. 

I launch myself away from the door, ripping off my suddenly overly-tight work clothes as I go. I find some of mom’s old denim cut offs that I had stolen from her wardrobe when I was sixteen, forcing them over my ass and falling onto my back on the bed in order to suck in enough to zip the tight little shorts. I roll off the bed clumsily, landing with a thud on my hands and knees before I search through my still-packed boxes of clothing that I had brought with me from LS. 

“Blue tank top… blue tank top… blue—ah-hah!” I grin, snatching the tank top from the box, causing it to topple over and send all the clothing within scattering across my bedroom floor. I ignore it, though I manage to slip a bit on a silk skirt in my rush to get to my vanity. I plop down into my seat, leaning forward to stare hard at my face in the mirror—I see what Gran meant about cleaning up: I look exhausted and it is only intensified by the black smudges of faded mascara under my eyes. _And **that’s** why you always wear waterproof mascara_ , I could imagine Granny lecturing. I clean my face up as efficiently as I can given the amount of time I have—I can almost certainly guarantee that Gran is timing me—and give myself another once over. I grimace and click my tongue over the state of my hair, thinking to myself that it is leaning closer to a fro than the pleasant style I had managed to force it into this morning. I pat at it, knowing a brush will only make matters worse, and in the end simply decide to pull the mass of black curls back into a ponytail. 

I almost get up to return back to Gran before I pause, glancing at the various lip glosses and lipsticks that Gran has gifted me with upon my return. Instead of opting for the usual chapstick, I reach for a pinkish sort of gloss, wincing in confusion before I smear what I assume is the correct amount over my broad lips. I pause, staring at myself in the mirror as I rub the little felt tip of the lip gloss over my lips. I blink before narrowing my eyes in disgust. I throw the gloss away from me and then reach for a tissue to rub the gloss furiously from my lips as I get up, tossing the tissue onto the ground as I yank my door open testily and stomp out into the hall. _Why am I bothering to gussy up for **him**? I’m only going to tell him to get the hell out of my house as soon as I’m back out there._ Gran will understand once I explain to her who he is and what he does for a living. 

Making my way around the corner into the living room, I’m greeted with the image of Trevor seated on top of the kitchen counter, his long legs still managing to reach the tiled floor where his muddy combat boots tap idly. He has a new beer, his first one sitting emptied and forgotten beside him on the counter. His finger taps audibly against the glass beer bottle along with the beat of the malt shop oldie that is chirping softly from the record player in the corner of the living room. He is quiet and calm, surprisingly enough, and doesn’t notice that I’m watching him. I look him over, crossing my arms under my chest—he is wearing a pair of black Dix sunglasses and I think offhandedly that he must’ve put them on while I was gone. He looks surprisingly cleaned up—well, compared to the first time I saw him—and I notice that I can no longer smell him as I could a month ago. Brow raised in approval, I cock my head to the side as I let my eyes wander over his revealed forearms due to his rolled up sleeves, observing his various garish tattoos. 

“Stare hard, retard.” 

I glance up, a bit startled at the sound of his voice, and frown at him. Due to his sunglasses, I can’t quite make out his expression. Choosing not to validate him with a response, I make my way over to him, keeping my face screwed up into a displeased glower. He watches me, and even if I can’t see his eyes I’m almost positive that he is holding my gaze—I can feel the intensity of it. I stop when I’m a foot away from him, my hip leaning against the corner of the countertop. Trevor shifts until he is facing me fully, leaning his weight back on his arm as he takes another sip of his beer. I watch as his tongue snakes out to catch a smudge of blueberry from the corner of his mouth. 

He waits for me to say something, I’m sure of it, because his mouth is hanging open and his tongue is grazing slowly back and forth against the back of his front teeth. My eyes zero in on his tongue subconsciously, my head weighing to the side as I drum my fingers on the counter. There is a moment of stillness between us as I try to think of how to approach this—I don’t know why he’s here, he could be here for pie or he could be here to kidnap me and cut me into a million tiny pieces before feeding me to the coyotes. Honestly I feel as if both are equally plausible, and now that I’m stuck here thinking of whether or not this man will kill me and my grandmother, I curse myself over thinking it safe to allow him to _drive me home_. 

_What was I **thinking**? That’s basically an invitation for stalking._

Trevor suddenly hops off of the counter, bouncing a bit on his heels afterwards and letting out a monster of a sigh. He pats down his jeans, straightening them where they had ridden up, and inhales deeply through his nose in a stretch of his muscles as he rubs his hands up and down his chest. I watch him without much amusement, my eyes thinning in suspicion as he leans towards me and tips his sunglasses down his nose to meet my gaze. Trevor opens his mouth, forming the beginning of his words silently, before the corner of his lips turns crookedly up in a smirk. 

“Hm…” He looks me up and down in an obvious sort of way, his teeth flashing at me. “ _Love_ those shorts on you.”

I push him away in frustration, ignoring his gasp of indignation as he bumps back audibly into the kitchen cupboards. His sunglasses are still low on his nose, revealing his malicious yellow eyes even as he holds his arms out in question of my aggression. 

“ _What_ are you _doing_ in my _house_?” I grind out through tightly gritted teeth, stabbing my index finger hard into his chest a few times as I move in close to him. He smells like dirt and fire and faintly of gasoline. My nose burns and I cover the lower half of my face with my hand as my eyes begin to water from the need to sneeze. Trevor watches me sneeze three times in a row, his upper lip curled in an amusing mix of curiosity and disgust. I gather myself together a moment later, sniffing hard at the congestion in my sinuses and I fix him with another hard stare. “And where is my Grandma? Huh?”

“What _the fuck_ do you think? That I _killed_ her and stuffed her in the freezer in the five fuckin’ minutes you were gone? Hm? _Christ_.” His condescending tone makes me huff my next breath irritably from my nose. “I wouldn’t _do that_ to her. Unlike _you_ she’s a patient and kind woman who accepted me into her home. Alright? But _fine_ —fine, fine, fine! She’s in the basement, go look for yourself.” 

I look him over suspiciously, searching for any sign of dishonesty but he is laying himself out for me. Almost literally, actually—he is practically pulling a starfish while standing up: arms extended at his sides and his legs spread at even width to his broad shoulders. I think then on how much room his presence takes up, not even counting on the fact that his physicality is staggering and hot and fidgety. Trevor is like a tick, greedily sucking up the air in the room and feeding off of the discomfort and attention that is awarded to him. “Go ahead! _See_ if I’m fucking lying. _Do it_.”

I don’t budge, deciding to hold my place without actually admitting that I believe him. Which, really, I have no reason to trust him—I still have no idea who he is or why he is in Gran’s house eating Quentin’s pie…

_…Quentin. Is that why Trevor is here?_

A disconcertingly cold wave of panic runs up my spine and pricks my skull like needles as it overcomes me. My mouth is dry and my throat seizes up, images of Quentin grey and lifeless forcing into my mind. _Did he OD? Is he in trouble? Did someone hurt him?_ Trevor must notice the change in me for he straightens up immediately and sets his beer on the counter without taking his eyes off of me. He is stiffly straight as he stands over me, his sunglasses slide precariously onto the very tip of his nose as his eyes dart back and forth between mine. “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

“Is Quentin—,” I can’t finish my question before Trevor is rolling his eyes at me, groaning loudly as his head rolls back on his shoulders—reminiscent of a whining teenager. 

“Ahh _fuck **me**_ , you are dramatic, aren’t you? Shit.” He grumbles, snatching up his beer and taking a disgustingly large gulp. “Chef is fine as far as I know. Calm down, will you?” 

I relax instantly, blowing out the breath I had held a bit unsteadily before I make my way over to where I had left my purse in the living room. I retrieve my inhaler, taking a hit before I toss my purse onto the floor beside Gran’s recliner. 

“Do I _look_ like the messenger of death and misfortune?” Trevor continues, looking over his shoulder at me with eyes narrowed dramatically. He watches me as I make my way back into the kitchen. I force the crappy old refrigerator door open and snatch up a soda. “Like—like I’m supposed to knock on your door with a stick up my ass and Chef’s uniform all folded up _nice_ and _neat_ in my hands and say,” He stands up military straight, stomping his boots together primly. “’I’ve got some bad news, ma’am. _Real bad_ news.’”

“Why else would you be in my house?” I ask, ignoring his jests. We meet eyes and a brief silence envelops us, only interrupted by the crisp click of my fingernail opening the tab on my soda, followed by the carbonated hiss of the opened can. “ _Quentin_ doesn’t live here, you know.”

Trevor shakes his head at me, sucking obnoxiously at his teeth before he looks down at the beer bottle in his hands. He rotates the bottle in his grasp idly and looks up at me, one of his eyebrows arched. “Geez, Jack-off, I’m starting to feel a _teensy bit_ unwelcome in your humble abode.”

I sigh, pushing on a small dent in the aluminum soda can as I tap my foot. “ _No_ …” I draw out the word and he continues to stare at me. “Actually, maybe. It depends on _why_ you’re here.” 

“ _Welllll_ , Jacky!” He nearly bellows with a sigh and a stretch, smacking his lips a few times as he looks me over with mock-contemplative eyes that are thinned nearly to slits in his appraisal. “I _suppose_ you mean whether or not I’m here to strangle you and then molest your stiff, tiny corpse.” Trevor says this casually, as if he is very much accustomed to this assumption being made. He sips at his beer and belches loudly before shrugging. “Wasn’t on my agenda, sweetheart, but fuck it if I can’t pencil you in.”

“Um—no, that’s alright.” I snort, taking a moment to give him a look from head to toe. My eyes linger on the sorry state of his boots. I can see a halo of dirt on the floor around his shoes. “It’s a normal question, Trevor. Shit, it’d be normal if you were my best friend.” Trevor’s eyes dart to mine from where he had been staring at the honey bee candy jar behind me, his mouth hanging open thoughtfully. “Not to mention that we met like… I don’t know, a month ago? _Once_. We’re strangers, babe.”

“Oh-ho-ho… No, Jacky, no. Noooooope. Nu-uh.” He wags the neck of his beer bottle at me. “ _We_ are _not_ strangers, sweetheart.”

I wince in annoyance at him before I glance over to my right at the open door that leads to the basement. Only the top of the stairs are visible and I try to strain my ears to hear Granny. I hold up a finger to Trevor in a signal to wait and take a deep breath. “Gran?” I shout in the direction of the basement. Trevor clears his throat and exhales as he settles into a more comfortable position, looking between me and the basement door.

“Yeah, baby?” I hear faintly. Trevor and I look to one another at the sound of her reply and I keep my eyes on him.

“Are you okay?” I push off from the counter beside the fridge where I had been leaning, deciding to trust that the state of the house would remain the same with my absence. Trevor wouldn’t show up at my house just to steal the less-than-spectacular items scattered around this old house. They were significant to Gran and I, they were commonplace in our daily routines but they would be of no value to some old tweaker.

I bounce down the squeaky stairs and jump the last two, landing on the cold cement floor of the basement. I sneeze twice from the new air down here, damp and chilled and musty, and hold the bottom of my tank top up to my mouth and nose as I make my way over to where Gran is eyeing her wine collection. She looks up as I join her, smiling until she sees my stomach peeking out from where my shirt was pulled up. Granny _tsks_ disapprovingly and slaps lightly at my belly, wrenching a good natured laugh from me.

“Oh phooey, Jacky! Why’d you come down here?” Gran sighs, fisting a hand on her hip and leaning forward slightly as she squints to read the labels. “I can handle it just fine.”

“I just wanted to see what you were up to.” It’s half a lie; at this point in Granny’s disease I can’t afford to not worry. In the past month I’ve come to realize that Granny is no invalid but she’s also not independent. Other than the 4 hours each weekday that I’m at work, I’ve become uncomfortable with the prospect of leaving Gran alone for too long. A good part of the time she can get along, can keep her thoughts organized and complete some of her old daily routine that she’s kept up from her housewife days. It’s not perfect, however, and slowly fissures in her veneer are rearing forth. In the past month alone I had two instances with Granny that had sent a spike of cold dread into my heart.

One Tuesday morning I had gone to the supermarket down the street upon Gran’s request to buy some eggs and milk for that day’s breakfast. I was gone for no longer than twenty minutes, having had a personal dilemma in the store about whether or not to buy some cookie dough for later. As I walked over the hill that descended down to Gran’s house I was greeted with the sight of a patrol car parked out in front. The officer informed me that Gran had called, confused and hysterical, wondering where I had gone. He had claimed that he went against the normal protocol of waiting 24 hours for a missing persons report due to the fact that his father had worked with Gran’s husband on the force. The officer knew Gran, and thusly of her dementia as well. 

I sigh now as I break from my thoughts, joining her in the evaluation of the wine in front of us. “What _are_ you up to, Gran? Why are you getting wine?”

“Oh, well, Trevor up there—what an absolute dog that boy is, just _an absolute dog_ , oh phooey!” Granny smiles privately and waves her hand in front of her face, as if she were flirtatiously dismissing a come-on from Trevor right at that moment. “Any-hoo, baby, I was just wonderin’ what sort of grape juice that young man would like, hm?”

“ _Trevor_?” My nose scrunches up considerably at the perplexing thought of _that man_ enjoying a nice glass of wine on a quiet spring afternoon. The idea makes me snort loudly which in turn makes Gran shoot me a hard look. She pinches me. “Ow! Okay, sorry. Umm,” I stick my lower lip out in thought as I examine the dusty labels. “Something… strong?”

“Shoot, well now that you mention it, Jack, he _did_ mention something about preferring a… hmm.” Gran’s eyes get a touch triumphant as she snatches up a deep emerald green bottle, rubbing her thumb across the paper label. “A ‘robust red’.”

With Gran distracted I take a moment to smirk at that, knowing she’d be totally oblivious to how very ludicrous that sounds coming from him. I frown at that private musing, reminding myself that I don’t _know_ a thing about him—well, other than the fact that he is a bit off in about every way a person can be and bursting with volcanic anger. _There is a timebomb in my kitchen who drinks robust reds._

I take the bottle from Gran and help her back up the rickety wooden steps. We meet Trevor back in the kitchen, where he quickly hops off the counter and ceases in the incessant spinning of his second empty beer bottle. I stand there at Gran’s side, my arms crossed and a cloudy scowl on my face as she sweetly asks him if he would like to stay for dinner and if this wine would be good enough. “It ain’t fancy, honey, but it’ll warm you up.” 

The private and almost indistinguishable way that Trevor’s eyes light up at the invitation makes my irritation falter and dim. He quirks a flash of a roguish grin at Granny before taking the bottle from her grasp, easily popping the cork with his hand and shoving the neck of the bottle under his nose. Granny gasps in scandalized delight as Trevor takes a deep, theatrical sniff of the wine before smacking his lips with a loud ‘mmm’. 

“That’ll do, Hazel dearest, _that’ll do_.”


	11. Skeleton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora and Trevor have an important discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely readers! <3 <3 <3 Just a quick word...
> 
> I recently deleted a not-so-nice comment, which I normally wouldn't do to a critique because I believe critiques are a part of sharing your writing. However, this wasn't a constructive criticism, it was a bit of a nasty comment. So, in response to that comment, I will direct you (upset commenter and any others unhappy with my OC) kindly but firmly to the tags of this story. As you can see, there I have listed 'Mental Health Issues', which is a key part of Pandora's characterization: her severe anxiety and unpleasant qualities. Yes, Pandora Jackson is not the most courageous, strong, or even pleasant/likable character--and yes, she is very melodramatic and has frequent asthma issues. I wrote her that way on purpose! :) So, if it makes anyone uncomfortable to read a story with an OC like this, please do not read this story. And also, though I thought this would be obvious: if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all, please!
> 
> Phew, now that I got that out, back to the story. This is a loooong chapter that is a direct continuation of the previous one.

I leave Trevor and Gran to chat as I turn to take an armful of corn to husk on the back porch. It is an odd sight—the two of them—with Trevor leaning over the counter beside Granny, his uncharacteristically straight teeth gleaming starkly beneath his dark sunglasses, tattooed arms supporting his weight, next to Granny’s perfectly curled snow white hair and her elegant pearl earrings. Very suddenly I feel a strong punch of affection in my gut at the respect and normalcy with which Trevor treats my grandmother. I can’t count the number of old ‘family friends’—condescending menopause warriors—who think it’s appropriate to talk to Gran as if she were a drooling dunce. They look at her with pitying eyes and pat me on the arm, whispering how ‘brave’ I am for taking on Gran’s ‘disability’. 

Seeing her now—eyes alight with the mischief that I am sure Trevor is spouting—I can’t grab a hold of my fluttering heart fast enough. It seems to burst from my chest, threatening to fly nervously to the ceiling like a trapped bird. I don’t think I remember a time I’ve felt so overwhelming relieved by the sight of something so simple. Trevor notices my eyes on the two of them and he looks up at me with the remnants of a smile on his face. He sees the naked joy on my face and blinks at me, his own cheerful expression faltering in favor of confusion. 

“Oh Trevor, why don’t you help Jacky with the corn husking?” Gran pats his shoulder good-naturedly as she begins to shuffle over towards her recliner. She sets her wine shakily onto her little table beside her chair, where she then turns on her ancient TV. The slightly distorted applause of the old program erupts into the room as Trevor grabs his own wine glass and makes his way over to me. “I need a rest, kids.”

Trevor wordlessly follows me through the overly-fragrant laundry room and out onto the back porch. He whistles low at the heat, fanning himself with his hand as he plops down across from me in the old metal patio furniture that Gran has had since the 70’s. I roll a corn across the table and he snatches it up, observing the thing curiously as I begin tearing into my own husk. “Where’s the corn?”

I smile quietly down at my work at that question, humming a bit under my breath in amusement before holding up my corn for his observation. Trevor’s brow rises mildly as he watches the sweet, shiny yellow orbs being revealed through my efforts of tearing the coarse green leaves away from the treasure within. “Like so.”

I watch with a sour frown as Trevor forgoes my delicate technique and simply rips into the husk with his teeth, spitting out the stringy hairs and wiping at his tongue with his palm when that doesn’t work to rid his mouth of the dirt and debris. 

“Shit.” I shake my head at him with a smirk, sighing a bit and concentrating back on my work.

“You know Jacky…” Trevor says after a minute of quiet, snatching another corn from the pile before I can protest. He looks at me almost sternly over the top of his shades as he points a hard finger towards the house. “You’ve got a fucking _gem_ of a woman in there.”

“I know.” I agree, smiling at him. Trevor takes off his sunglasses and tosses them carelessly onto the table where they slide noisily across the surface and fall off the edge. He doesn’t make a move to rectify that so I lean under the table to retrieve them. “She likes you. You treat her like a human being.”

Trevor frowns at that, searching my face in question as he winces from the force with which he has to break off the stem from the cob. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I? What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t sound defensive but rather genuinely baffled by my comment. I meet his eyes and blink at him. _Does he not know_? “Gran’s got Alzheimer’s.” I say thickly, letting that sink in for a moment. “Most people talk to her like she’s got the mental capacity of a goat. Drives me crazy.”

“Huh.” Trevor grunts, brow furrowed in thought before he shrugs, tucking his tongue in the corner of his mouth as he concentrates back on husking. “Welp, Jack-o, people are cunts—and _that_ you can quote me on.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” I grimace from the heat as I look out at the wavering horizon, the suffocating temperature making my entire body feel damp. I wave away a sweat bee as it lands on my neck. “It just _gets to me_ , you know? Yeah, sure: Gran’s… not what she used to be. But the way these people talk to her...” Trevor watches as I shut my eyes and grit my teeth, breathing deeply to smooth out my anger. 

“She doesn’t seem bad to me.” He muses, licking his dry lips. He reaches for another piece of corn. “In fact, seems to _me_ like your supposed _job_ as ‘caretaker’ consists mostly of lounging around and painting your nails on the beach.”

I frown, glancing down quickly to my cobalt blue nails. Gran didn’t like the look of bare nails and had insisted on me having a fresh pedicure if I wanted to continue walking around barefoot in her house. She’s a particular broad, sure, but it’s the little things that make her feel happy—I now have an ever growing collection of nail polishes. 

“She’s not doing _well_ , Trevor.” I admit quietly, glancing over my shoulder at the porch door before I chew on my lip to keep the sore lump in my throat from growing. “Her memory’s _so_ spotty these days.” 

Trevor keeps quiet, shockingly enough. He even seems to be a bit uncomfortable at the sight of my open dismay, his thick brows drawing down. I feel his discomfort and absorb it—to be honest I’m not really sure _why_ I’m confiding in him. This sort of thing happened on the night I met him. I let my guard down around him; found myself spouting odd truths that I usually smother down into my heart. It suddenly hits me—again—how fucking _bizarre_ this is. Never in my life would I ever dream of opening up like this to a stranger. Sure, I do tend to wear my heart on my sleeve in most ways, but this? This, with him, makes my stomach ache in anxiety. Not _because of him_ necessarily, more so that I am so eager to spill my guts out to this man at every chance I get. It’s almost as if his overwhelming presence crushes the truth out of me—his eyes tracking me for lies and burning me for telling one. 

“I mean, _you_ see _this_ side of her, right? The charming little thing with the pressed clothes and a spotless home.” I continue, yanking a bit too roughly at the husk in my hands. “That’s the Gran I know, the one I left here when I moved to LS.” I pause then, feeling a spike of painful shame at the utterance of my biggest regret. He doesn’t know that, though, I try to convince myself. He doesn’t know how deeply rooted my selfishness is. “Being back here I’m seeing what she is now. She’s tired and scared and confused most of the time now and I can’t help her. There is nothing I can do to make this better for her.”

Like most times, I don’t realize I’m crying until the tears fall, warm and wet and unwelcome. I feel especially uncomfortable with this fucking heat and I wipe at the sweat and tears on my face. I can feel the baby hairs framing my face become wet with the sweat sticking to my temples. Trevor is staring and I wish he wasn’t, I really wish he were a twisted figment of my imagination and not a solid, heated, mean man who fidgets like he has live wires for nerves. 

“Shit.” I laugh humorlessly, blinking rapidly and sighing deeply. “Sorry, I have no idea why I told you that.”

“You need a fucking shrink, Christ.” He says gruffly, snorting loudly before spitting a wad of spit over the railing of the porch. “Better yet, you need to get ol’ Granny a caretaker. I don’t fucking know, a professional or something.”

“I’m _not_ putting her in a home.” I snap at him and he looks up with bewildered eyes, mouth hanging open as he soaks in my hostility and processes it. 

“I didn’t say _that_ , Jack-off.” He growls impatiently, tossing his latest corn onto the table just as haphazardly as he did with his sunglasses. I eye the corn for mistakes and see many—the thing is mangled from his overtly aggressive grip, many of the little yellow kernels are squished and wet. There is quite a lot of damp hair left and I abandon my current cob to tend to his. “Isn’t there… err, some kind of _treatment_ for her?”

“No.” I reply bitterly and he looks confused. “There is no cure or treatment for Alzheimer’s.”

“None.” He repeats bluntly, unbelieving, and I nod. Trevor rubs thoughtfully at the stubble on his face, calluses rasping loudly against the rough texture. He then lets out a mighty sigh, scratching at his thinning hair. “Phew, that’s fucked, Jacky.”

“It’s unfair.” I swallow hard, laying the last of the corn on the table, cleaned and ready for boiling. I leave Trevor briefly to take the corn inside. 

I put the corn in the pot of boiling water on the stove and prepare some skewers with sweet red bell peppers, zucchini, and marinated beef. I quickly mix up a sauce of sticky sweet barbeque, honey, and some wicked neon red Asian hot sauce. My mind is blank as I go through the motions, grabbing two sodas from the fridge and balancing all my items precariously in my arms before I go back out to the porch and head straight for the grill. Trevor is still in his seat as I prepare the fire, his wine not-so-surprisingly gone. He seems very much the type to _chug_ a glass of Chianti. For a while he is sat watching the sea in the distance, his harsh face scrunched up deeply in thought even as the thick smoke from the grill wafts into his face. He doesn’t shift or even blink until I come back to join him at the table, my bare feet propped up on the empty chair next to me as I slide the soda over to him. 

He considers the eCola before using one hand to open it easily—an interesting if not a bit unimpressive talent that I watch with raised eyebrows as I take a sip from my own cola. Hurts my fingernails just to watch it. Trevor nearly chugs the whole thing in one sip, I can tell just from the intensity with which he swallows, before he scrunches his nose up at the sugary taste. 

“Why’d you think Chef had keeled over, hm?” Trevor asks suddenly and I look up from my soda in surprise. 

After a few moments of silent staring passes between the both of us, my eyes retreat weakly in order to pretend to be monitoring the status of my skewers on the grill. Trevor waits patiently, though, and that in itself is a bit unsettling. I sigh, thinking over my response as I feel a bead of sweat curling down my spine. 

“Well, it wasn’t just the thought that he was _dead_. With Quentin, it could’ve been anything.” I begin, choosing my words carefully and keeping my eyes on the wavy lines of heat that rise from the grill. “I mean—shit. Ok, you have to understand that my reaction back there is the result of my entire life spent wondering if my cousin was getting into trouble because of crystal or worse—dead.” Trevor is listening pretty intently, surprisingly enough, and I risk a glance at him to see that his tongue is passing along his bottom lip absently, back and forth, as his eyes scan my entire face. “He overdosed for the first time when I was in school, I was twelve. That was probably one of the worst years of my life.”

Trevor continues to stare at me before clearing his throat and leaning back heavily in his chair. I now notice that during my explanation he had been leaning forward slowly until his entire upper body was hunched over the table, elbows propping up his weight. “Why?”

“ _Why_? What do you mean, _why_?” Trevor frowns at my pissy reaction but makes no move to speak. “Because he’s my family—and that year I had to see one of the only people I truly love hooked up to machines to stay alive. He was a fucking skeleton and so, _so_ sick for _so long_ and it was all because of that stupid shit that he smokes.” 

I’m aware that I’m getting a bit aggressive with Trevor because of the knowledge I hold about him—Trevor Philips sells meth, most likely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he used it as well. I’ve always been so adamantly against it and hated it—hated what it did to Quentin—that even now the very knowledge that this man before me does this drug makes my image of him shift. It isn’t fair, because of course I know that Quentin is the perfect example to fault my reasoning—Quen is a separate human being from his addiction and he isn’t a bad person because of it. The twelve year old in me, however, squeezes her eyes shut and claps her hands over her ears stubbornly, will absolutely not listen to reason. It’s unfortunate, but looking at Trevor now, knowing that he might’ve been the reason my cousin relapsed, makes me view him as something dirty and rotten.

All of a sudden I feel as if a bubble has been popped in my brain, as if I were abruptly released of Trevor’s heady, hypnotizing spell. Now I am reminded of my resolve the first night that I met him: _you do not want to see him ever again—stay away from him_. I want him to leave.

I breathe deeply and turn away from Trevor’s expression—which is contemplative and suspicious all at once. Grabbing my soda, I gulp down the rest of it, trapping an uncomfortably large pocket of air down my throat. It makes me nauseous. 

“Well, well, well… _Mhmm_. _Now_ I see.” He drawls, spinning his empty soda can as he nods slowly and watches me. 

“What?” I snap before I can stop myself, sitting heavily back in my chair and crossing my arms. _This fucking heat_... 

“At first I thought you were this much of a carping twenty-something brat because you had the stink of LS still on your fucking clothes.” Trevor smiles with acid laced in his impressive teeth, wagging his finger at me as he shrugs his head down between his shoulders, as if timid. “But _now I see_ —you’re this way from _experience_. Because ol’ Chef fucked you over big time, eh? Mm, yup, I’d say that’s about right.”

I let my head fall back between my shoulders, staring up at the sky that peeks out between the dark patterns of the oak tree’s limbs. “I have standards, alright? What about _that_ makes me a ‘carping twenty-something brat’?”

“Listen up, Jack-o.” Trevor leans forward onto the table, trapping me in his gaze as he smiles sugary sweet. “ _Everyone_ is fucked, alright? Some more than others, sure, sure, sure—but _I_ think it should be common fucking knowledge that we all have our outs, yeah? For _you_ , it’s Los Santos.” He catches the way I flinch and thankfully doesn’t tear me apart for it. “For Chef and me, _well_ … you know how the story goes.” He shrugs. “Different strokes for different folks, sweetheart.”

I blink at him, still feeling the sharp jolt of shock at the spot-on conclusion he made of me prickle along my arms—and so offhandedly, as if he had no idea what he was doing to me. And, looking at him now smiling at me as if we were speaking of something pleasant like approaching cool weather, I think that he may not actually have any idea. He is making an assumption, an eerily correct one, but he doesn’t seem… judgey about it. He’s just stating the facts, and accepting them. I can’t fathom that, cannot for the life of me imagine just seeing these horrible truths laid out before me and learning to let them be. 

“That’s an excuse.” I mumble, trapped like a fly to light in his gaze. “Quentin’s a good person.”

“He’s a fucking peach!” Trevor agrees, booping me on the nose with his index finger. Then his smile widens into a grin as he settles cozily into his folded arms that support his weight, leaning forward closer to me. I can now see all the lines and scars mapping out his face and my lips part absently as my eyes zero in on the scar marring his upper lip. “He just happens to get his kicks in a _fun_ way, as opposed to _you_.” He pauses to soak in my expression before he leans even closer still, as if to tell me a secret. “He _does_ know what he’s doing, Jacky—trust me, I’ve known dear Chef for goin’ on four years now.”

I frown, aware of how close we are both leaning in on the table, and find myself able to smell the beer and wine on his overly hot breath. I listen briefly to the sizzling of the meat on the grill before I feel my eyes sting with tears. “Yeah, well— _I’ve_ known him my whole life, Trevor.”

“Yup.” He pops the ‘p’ annoyingly loud on his bottom lip.

“I thought that after all of this, after he had gotten sober…” I trail off when my voice breaks, Trevor’s smile falters and his brow twitches at the sound of my weak tone. I sniff pitifully, hiding my face in my hands from Trevor’s unwavering attention. I need a moment of respite from his searching eyes. “ _Why_ is he doing this to me?”

“Ugh!” Trevor groans irritably, sounding so exasperated that I peek at him from a crack in my fingers. “See, Jack, _that’s_ what is _so fucking annoying_ about you: you think everything is meant to hurt _you_. You take everything so _personally_.” I close the crack in my fingers, engulfing my vision in blackness. “Chef is working on his own shit, kid. _You_ skipped out, as far as I can tell—you fucked off into the glittering bullshit of an LS sunset and whistled all the merry way.” He pauses in his attack, taking a deep breath through his nose and clearing his throat—to no avail, when he speaks again his voice is still like sandpaper. “Personally, I think he’s doing a lot better than when I first showed up on the scene.”

I calmly take my hands from my face, swallowing deeply and snuffling as a few more tears fall. Somehow Trevor’s brutal, stinging honesty is something of a relief for my tightly wound heart. I still feel as adamantly strong about my stance on Quentin’s sobriety—and my general loathing of drug-use—but somehow I feel as if I have a new window to peer out from on the subject, albeit it will be done so reluctantly. And now, as I run through our conversation once more in my mind, I pick up on Trevor’s last words.

“Wait, what?” I look to Trevor from where I had been staring out at the Alamo Sea. Trevor hasn’t looked away from my face and meets my gaze as it falls back on him. “What do you mean when you ‘showed up’?”

Something akin to reluctance suddenly passes through Trevor’s eyes, enough so for him to break eye contact momentarily to play it off with a shrug. He leans away from me now and back into his seat where he props his muddy boots up on the table, directly in my face. I sneeze immediately and quickly cover my nose and mouth with my hand, sitting back in my chair to get away from the dirty shoes. 

“Hm—well, Jack-off, you see… It’s like this.” Trevor begins in a sagely tone, lacing his fingers together and cracking his knuckles before setting his intertwined fingers in his lap. He begins to nod as he looks off into the distance. “I had recently gotten into something of a kerfuffle with my last employee about—oh, about 4 odd years ago. And _so_ , of _course_ , I needed a new business partner to replace that _fucking shitbag_.” He pauses, looking at the dirt under his nails. “Ahem—so whaddya know, there was Chef: all fucked out of his mind and looking like a microwaved turd, needing some steady cash.”

I’m aware of what I must look like—eyes wide in rapt attention and still wet from tears not yet fallen, with a bright red nose that shines. I’m leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, gaze unmoving from Trevor’s face. 

“At first he was a real pain in the ass—not productive at all, certainly no employee of the month.” He shakes his head, mock-woeful. “ _Then_ we had a _friendly little chat_ about the integrity of Trevor Philips Industries, and that he didn’t have to be a fucking junkie to enjoy speed.” I scowl at him but Trevor ignores me, he must know that by now it is reflex for me to be judgmental of such things. “I taught poor ol’ Chef the meaning of moderation, Jacky, and he should be thanking his lucky stars that I came along with _that_ fucking wisdom when I did. He was _pretty_ much ‘sober’ in a year, which is I suppose what _he_ told _you_ —without the ‘pretty much’ bit added in, of course.”

“Amazing.” I grumble after a few long beats of silence. Shaking my head, I get up from my chair and retreat from the conversation towards the grill. Opening the lid releases a fog of black smoke that I jump back from instinctually. I watch with watering eyes as the cloud drifts up sickly towards the sky, clashing horribly with the blinding blue of the blazing afternoon. 

My escape is momentary—Trevor saunters over to me, belching low in his chest before he settles in beside me. He stares with his lip jutting out in thought at the slight char that had accidentally developed on the skewers. He snorts, as if he knew so much better about grilling, and rests his elbow on my shoulder. I glance at his arm quietly, my brow lifted as my eyes travel along the tattoos until I’m at Trevor’s face. He ignores me, nodding to the skewers that I begin to place on the plate. “You’re lucky I like my meat black and shriveled.”

“Shut it.” I laugh in spite of my growing discomfort with his close proximity. “Take it or leave it, buddy. I ain’t doing it over.”

“ _Whoa_ -ho-ho… Sorry there, Jack-o. Jesus.” Trevor stumbles back a step from me, flashing his charmingly wild grin and holding a hand to his chest as if I had physically struck him. He bounces back a few steps, lapping up my mildly amused smile that I attempt to hide by ducking my head. I glance over, unable to help myself, just to see what he does next. Trevor shrugs, spinning on his heel and waving at me over his shoulder.

“Uh—where are you going?” I ask—a bit urgently, embarrassingly enough. 

Trevor stops abruptly, looking over his shoulder at me with an eyebrow arched and a nasty grin on his face. “Well, _Jacky_ , I _was_ going to retrieve your grand-mama to join us in the feast of fiery road-kill that you’ve prepared—,”

“Right.” I interrupt awkwardly, pointing a finger gun at him as he stares blankly at me. “Of course. Actually, though, it’s too hot for Gran out here today—,”

“Right!” Trevor bellows abruptly, his powerful voice enough to send a little thrill of fear through my sternum, making me jump a bit. He observes my reaction for a moment, his expression dull looking in the way his mouth hangs open. Then, as suddenly as he had exploded just a moment ago, he begins to laugh heartily, pointing at my bewildered expression. “You know Jacky, I _fucking **hate**_ when people interrupt me. I really, really, _reallllly_ do.”

I snort out an impatient sigh through my nose, glaring at Trevor as I bring the plate of skewers over to the table and set them down. He cocks his head to the side and bats his eyelashes at me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

When I go inside to retrieve the corn and the tableware, Gran insists that she just _can’t_ miss a dinner with Trevor Philips—it’d be impossibly rude and she wasn’t about to start with that sort of behavior, _phooey to the heat_. To combat Blaine County’s ungodly temperature, Gran insists on arranging a plethora of electric fans that blow through the mosquito screens on the windows. She makes a point to save the special one that blows a fine, icy mist for the dinner table. Trevor assists in this construction with the enthusiasm of an enamored teenager, hanging on Granny’s every command and giggle that he manages to wrench out of her. I allow this, watching privately from the background where I dish out the food.

\-----

In the end dinner is a beautiful and odd success, with it concluding with Granny’s cheeks becoming a permanent shade of lovely raspberry cream. Trevor was relentless, never letting up in his adoring attention to my grandmother, and by the end of the night I am just as tickled by Trevor’s theatrical presence as Gran is. I know that it is a shallow feeling that probably won’t last for long, for it is rooted primarily in his outstanding respect for the most wonderful woman in my life, but it is still glowing sweetly in my chest as I gather up the plates. I glance over my shoulder to catch sight of Trevor jumping up merrily from his seat in order to assist Gran back into the house. I have the slight suspicion that Gran might also be a bit drunk, just judging from the way she laughs harder and louder with each new joke—and new glass of wine. 

I laugh quietly to myself, surprised at the warmth of it, and set to rinsing the tableware. It isn’t long before Gran joins me in the kitchen where she immediately waddles over to the refrigerator and retrieves Quentin’s pie—or what was left of it. Really, though, it seems like it is now ‘Trevor’s pie’ more than anything. 

“Oh… Oh phooey, that man!” Gran sighs, out of breath from glee, and pushes the pie across the counter towards me. 

“Where is ‘that man’?” I am unable to hide my knowing smirk from Gran. She turns cherry red, her expression more than a touch abashed, and pinches me until I yelp half-heartedly. 

“Don’t you dare tease me, girl.” She scolds, smacking me on the butt for good measure, before she returns to the fridge to retrieve the monster-sized ice cream carton. “Trevor is outside on the telephone; he received a call from a colleague and insisted that he just _had_ to take it.” My ears perk at that, glancing sneakily at Gran. She doesn’t seem as if she has any knowledge of Trevor’s ‘colleague’. I’d like to think that Quentin had the decency to keep his true profession to himself. “Men and their work, phooey!”

We are quiet for a moment as we both tend to our tasks, Gran only breaking the silence to hum along with her record player. It is when the dishwasher is almost creaking from the amount of dishware that I force into it that I am full to bursting and can’t help but blurt out. “Why do you like Trevor, Gran?”

Gran blinks at me, her beautiful eyes—the color of sweet blue glass—flitting across my face in question before she suddenly hardens coolly. She turns back to the plates of pie and ice cream that she is dishing, looking down her nose at her work. “Now what sort of question is that?”

“Granny, I mean— _come on_.” I whisper, looking over my shoulder at the laundry room door that leads out to the porch. “He’s dirty and rude and loud, he’s got tattoos—which I know you hate—and he’s just…”

“Just _what_ , girl?” Gran stops fussing with the ice cream scooper and turns with her bent wrist on her hip. I look down at her hand and see it is cloudy white with melted vanilla ice cream. 

Meeting her eyes meekly only serves to make me feel more ashamed. I sigh, shrugging pathetically and swallowing as my ears and cheeks erupt in heat. “I’m sorry ma’am. I just didn’t think you’d like someone… like _him_ , you know?”

Gran stares at me for a long moment, quiet and very obviously fuming, before she bustles past me and leans over me to rinse the sticky ice cream from her delicate fingers. “Oh _phooey_ , Pandora Jackson.” She flicks the excess water on her hands into the sink before reaching for a towel to dry her hands. “You know, baby, when I was your age I used to take one look at a person and decide in that first moment whether or not I’d give them the time of day—I did that with most of my family and I’ve paid the price.” I’m weak enough to be unable to look at Gran as she tells me this. I keep my head ducked dejectedly and focus all my discomfort and shame into the sponge that I scrub at coagulated barbeque sauce with. “Now I ain’t stupid. I know that fellow out there ain’t all right in the head, but shoot if I’m not the same way at this point.”

At that I snap my head up, shaking my head in denial of her words before I can even think about it. _No, no, no—Gran is **fine**. She **is** right in the head._ She waves away my reaction, seemingly not in the mood for false reassurances. 

“Now you listen up,” She points a shaky finger at me, piercing me with breathtaking eyes that could make a grown man weep. “Pandora, I don’t want you to wake up one day and realize you don’t have anyone to lean on because you were too busy pickin’ at every other person who looks a bit queerer than the rest of the crowd.” I bite my lip, breathing out shakily as my throat tightens and gets sore from trying to hold back tears. “What matters, baby, is that Trevor treats me with unconditional kindness. Phooey, sure, he’s a bit of a randy cuss—but, I don’t suppose that’d change if he knew about my spells, hm? I’d wager he would treat me just as sweet.”

I nod modestly at that, instantly thinking to how he _had_ reacted to discovering that Gran had Alzheimer’s; or, rather, how he _didn’t_ react at all. He didn’t water down his words or speak slowly to her; he didn’t become solemn and pitiful. He was normal—well, normal by _his_ standards. But that was Gran’s point, I suppose—Trevor didn’t try to cater to Gran, yet was impossibly lovely and charming with her because he _wanted_ to, not because she was getting on in years or because she has dementia; it was because she treated him with kindness and welcomed him into her home without a second thought, even if she despised tattoos and maybe glanced once or twice at the mud on his boots. I suppose this all should be common sense to me—the whole ‘treat others how you want to be treated’ spiel, and maybe it _would’ve_ been common sense if I hadn’t fucked it all and moved to LS to hide away from my family. Really, all my problems presently could somehow branch—however minor—back to my move to LS. But did that really validate everything that was wrong with me emotionally, or was I just making excuses for how naturally selfish I am? I think to my parents, of the dad that skipped out due to impatience with his nutty wife and daughter and the mom who is consumed by material want in her hovel in the hills. Am I just a byproduct?

As I stand there, letting the cold water run over my hands, listening half-heartedly to Gran lamenting her goodnights to what had to be Trevor—I could practically feel his heat from here—I feel suddenly _very_ aware of myself. Very in tune with all of my vicious and petty thoughts and now that I know of them, am able to shine a spotlight on them, I try to reason with them. Yes, I judge Trevor by his appearance and his smell and his overall disruptive energy, but is it also because of Quentin’s warning? If I had met Trevor on the street or in a bar or in a fucking library, my shallow judgments on his smell or his tattoos or the dirt under his nails would be bullshit. But because I met Trevor through my meth-cooking cousin, spent a bewildering night with him, and then was warned off him like a bad habit—well, that just makes things more complicated. _Much_ more complicated.

My hands have pruned and so I shut off the sink, wiping my wet hands along my neck and décolletage to ward off the heat. I turn as I run the moisture on my palms along my shoulders, eyes narrowing thoughtfully as I watch Trevor give Granny a jaunty salute. She giggles pleasantly and shuffles off down the hall towards her too-big bedroom, one side of the room untouched from the last day that her husband had slept in it. 

Trevor smiles after her a few moments after she leaves, then sniffing loudly and pursing his lips as he turns on his heel to face me with a boyish glint in his gaze. His eyes zero in on the way my chest shines with cold water, his tongue tracing lewdly along his upper lip in a slow pass. I scrunch up my face in disgust as his eyes roll back and he groans, stalking towards me—hips first—until he stops abruptly right in front of me. I can’t help but laugh, finding his movements very reminiscent of a certain cartoon roadrunner, stopping stick-straight and smiling goofily while a _bwoing-woing-woing_ sounds in the background. 

“Ohhh! Mm-hm- _hm **mmm**_!” He wheezes theatrically. “Mm—ah, is this dessert?” He snarls, staring at my shining cleavage and leaning over me. 

“Nope.” I flick his forehead as hard as I can manage, successfully encouraging him to back off long enough for me to hand him his plate of half-melted ice cream and blueberry pie. “This is.” 

“Hmm…” He rumbles with a mighty sigh, staring down half-heartedly at his food as I shovel a fork full into my mouth. “Well, ah, I _think_ I’d rather have both. So uh why don’t _we_ —,”

“Did Quentin call you?” I ask, my words slurred by the pie in my mouth. 

Trevor’s eyes are narrowed so heavily that I can only see a tiny slit of yellow through his lids, his head is cocked in question and his jaw is hanging open as he stares at me. He registers my question then, shaking his head wildly like a wet mutt and trumpeting his lips loudly—again, reminiscent of a cartoon. He focuses on me again after he is composed, eyes still sparkling and a dazzling grin in place. I smile slightly in spite of myself, looking at his teeth before meeting his eyes as he leans across from me on the opposite kitchen counter. Trevor casually crosses one leg over the other, nodding to me as he composes a massive fork-full of ice cream and forces it into his mouth. “Eavesdropping, eh sweetheart?”

“Me? _Nooo_.” I say, heavy with sarcasm, and shrug as he barks out a short laugh. “Gran mentioned that you were on the phone with a colleague _and_ …”

“Annnnd…” Trevor nods, rolling his eyes and waving his hand as if to encourage me to continue. When I don’t he huffs irritably. “ _Fuck me_ , what—what, do you think that TPI is a _two person_ organization, _hm_? Do you think that _I_ would call my company a _company_ if it only had two fucking old cunts at its head?”

I raise a brow, my tongue darting out to catch a smudge of blueberry sauce from the corner of my mouth. I shrug and push around a plump berry on my plate, watching the dark juices swirl prettily with the black specked white of the melted vanilla ice cream. “Well sor _ry_ —I only know of my cousin working for Trevor Philips _Industries_. I’m sure there are many others.”

“Well you are correct in that assumption.” Trevor says, pointing his fork at me. “In fucking fact—not that it’s any of _your_ concern, seeing as you are nothing but a layman with not the faintest idea of intricate business technicalities— _that_ was _not_ dear Chef, but a different minion of mine.” He pauses, blinking and looking up to the ceiling in thought before he adds: “My CEO, if you will.”

I almost laugh at the thought of a CEO in a drug dealing ring, but rein it in as fast as it threatens to escape. Trevor doesn’t notice either way, he is too busy squashing his dessert into one big purple mash. “CEO, huh? What does _that_ job entail?”

Trevor looks up mischievously from his food, a line of purple goop running down his chin from the corner of his mouth. He gulps heavily, coughing slightly from the exertion on his throat, and looks to me. “Ah-ah-ah! I’m _not_ falling for that!”

I do laugh this time, unable to help it, and set my dish down before holding my palms up in question. “Falling for _what_? I’m not some undercover cop, geez!”

“Nu-uh, _I know_ what you’re doing, Jack-o.” Trevor sets his plate down too and suddenly, without any reason, saunters the few paces between us and heads straight for me. I blink owlishly at him and stumble backwards away from his approach until I’m bumping loudly against the cupboards. He closes in until we are almost touching, his head bent to hold my eyes as he fences me in with his hands on either side of the counter behind me. “Now, Jacky.” He begins, leaning down a bit until we are at eye level. His voice is that of a kind parent speaking to an upset child, soft and condescending. “I’m aware that you like to _know_ and _control_ every little _itty bitty_ aspect of your grown adult man-cousin’s life, but I’m afraid I won’t be party to such things, yeah?”

If Trevor’s basic strategy with his unique body language is to fluster and make dreadfully uncomfortable—which sounds very characteristic—then it works. I attempt to hide my discomfort, of course, but I fidget under his close proximity. I huff out a breath, sweet with vanilla, and let my head thump back against the upper cabinets to gain some room from his overwhelming proximity. “Trevor.” I grunt out stiffly.

“No, no—it’s okay, it’s _okay_ … _Shh_ …” Trevor shakes his head solemnly, eyes running along my elongated neck. “You don’t have to explain—once a busybody, _always_ a busybody. It’s sad but true.”

I nearly jump as my phone begins to vibrate on my thigh. “Ooh!” Trevor’s expression shifts from uncomprehending to delightfully amused, looking down to find the source of the vibrating sound as I awkwardly try to shift without touching him to retrieve my phone.

“Oh _my_ , Jacky.” Trevor rumbles, his harsh voice thick and randy as he waggles his eyebrows at me. He blinks as he realizes that it’s my phone, not some monster vibrator that I had kinkily hidden up my snatch for the evenings festivities with my ancient grandmother. 

I shoot him a glare as I duck out from under his arm and press my phone to my ear, wincing at the loud club music that blares out from the speaker. “Um, hello?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, heyyy Panda!” Oliver slurs on the other line. My blood runs cold, my stomach falling out of my ass as I stand there, mouth bobbing open like a fish. 

“Fuck.” I mouth silently to myself, covering the speaker on the phone and glancing desperately at the caller ID. _I could’ve sworn_ … Yup, no name—because I had deleted Oliver from my contacts. “Fuck me, _fuck me_!”

“Huh?” Trevor grunts, sounding a bit irritated to be out of the loop as he watches me squirm. “What’s happening?”

“Helloooo?” Oliver sings as I look back desperately at Trevor, as if he could help me with this, and I bite my knuckle hard and squeeze my eyes shut before I take a monster of a breath. 

“Hey Oliver!” I fart out, slapping a hand to my forehead and jumping from foot to foot as I stare at Trevor. He glares and holds his arms out, ‘ _what_?’

“Oh… oh man, Panda…” Oliver sighs dreamily over the loud beat of the awful music. “Pan-dor-a.”

“Er, yup.” I laugh anxiously, pacing. “What’s up?”

Oliver mumbles something into the phone, something slurred and indecipherable over the music of whatever seedy bar it sounds like he is slumming in. I ask him to repeat himself and it takes a minute at a half for Oliver to drunkenly meander outside of the bar, the music still audible over the phone but muted enough for me to understand him more clearly.

“I miss you, Panda…” Oliver says, his soft voice sending a thrill through my heart. My ears heat and I look away from Trevor. 

“Uh—thanks, Oliver.” I swallow thickly and wince. “Where is Kelly?”

“Oh… aw _psh_ … _Kelly_.” Oliver’s voice turns ragged with emotion as he sighs. “Kelly… Kelly is gone. She left me.”

“Oh… oh _wow_.” I frown and stare down at my bare feet, wiggling my painted toe nails as I chew on my lip. “But—um, it’s been like two months since you two—,”

“Yeah. Yeah I know.” He groans, laughing without humor. “She said she wasn’t _actually_ finished with her boyfriend—says she feels like she has a—,” He belches softly and I scrunch up my nose, rolling my eyes. “ _has_ a real _future_ with him.”

“Ah. Crap, Oliver.” I scratch at my scalp, taking a deep breath. “I’m real sorry; I, um, don’t know what to say.”

“ _I_ know what to say.” Oliver says quickly, as if he had been waiting for me to say those exact words. “What _I_ want to say, Panda—Pandora, is that I feel like I made a _huge_ mistake with you. I regret ending things. Really.”

The bomb has dropped and I let out the air inflating my lungs, not bothering to look back at Trevor as I hold a finger back at him in a signal to wait. I make a b-line towards the back porch, not stopping until I’m at the tire swing I had clung to during a different uncomfortable conversation earlier today. 

“Oliver... What are you doing?” I sigh into the phone, covering my eyes with my hand as I swing softly back and forth. “You’re wasted.”

“I’m buzzed.” He corrects me playfully and I can practically feel his gorgeous smile through the phone. “Come on, Panda. I’m being a jerk right now, calling you under the circumstances. But I’ve felt this way for a while, even when I was with Kelly.”

I feel jittery and suddenly bursting with energy, his words are worming their way into my mind and making my heart thud quickly. I laugh softly into the phone, leaning my weight back so that I can look up at the pink sky as a breeze cools the sweat on my neck. “Listen… It’s not like I don’t miss you, Oliver. But, I don’t know… I’m in Grapeseed now and—,”

“Well _I’m_ in Chumash.” He challenges. I listen as a siren passes by in the background of his call. “I’m out with my friends but I’d ditch them in a second to see you.”

I laugh girlishly and feel my cheeks begin to redden as my stomach flips in excitement and desire. It would be preposterous for me to deny that I was interested in seeing Oliver tonight. Is it silly of me to indulge in this, what could be just a blatant drunken booty call? Maybe, but wasn’t that what my ‘relationship’ with Oliver was anyway? Fucking around shamelessly because we both didn’t have a plan. 

I decide to be blunt. “Oliver, am I _really_ the nearest piece of ass available to you?”

“Geez, Panda.” Oliver chides, and I blink as I realize that I’ve become accustomed to Trevor’s personal brand of communication—normal people skirt around these sort of things. “Listen, it’s not like that. I mean, I won’t lie, I’m dying to fuck you.” A shiver runs down my spine at the way his kind voice darkens. “I mean—I’m divorced, I’ve got a boring job, I’m going grey… Its not like I have a girl in every town. There’s only you, Pandora, which is how I like it.” 

Well, there goes my resolve. 

I smile warmly, glancing up as the monstrous roar of a nearby truck startles the next door neighbor’s dog into a barking frenzy. I squint after the blur of red that precedes a massive cloud of dust traveling down the road. 

_Trevor_. 

Very suddenly I wriggle out of the tire swing, hopping on one foot when my ankle catches on the lip of the tire. I keep my eye on the disappearing cloud of kicked up dust, ignoring Oliver’s next words as I run up the porch steps two at a time until I’m bursting into the living room. I look around, as if expecting to see Trevor still there, waiting for my return with his wicked smile and overwhelming eyes. 

“Panda, you there?” Oliver’s voice nearly startles me as I make my way over to the kitchen counter where a peek of bright pink catches my eye. 

“Yeah, one sec.” I mumble dismissively, staring down uncomprehendingly at an obnoxiously neon fuchsia loofah. Picking it up and weighing it in my hands, it takes me a few moments until I realize: _my_ loofah that I had left… in _Trevor’s truck_. Suddenly this entire night makes sense, and even as I continue to study the shower accessory as if it were something otherworldly, I begin to doubt the probability of my assumption—maybe even the existence of the loofah itself. 

As I turn to take the loofah into the bathroom, my toe catches on something and I stumble forward onto my hands and knees, my phone tumbling with a quiet thud to the carpet. I wince, rolling my sore wrist around as I glance back to see what I had tripped over. There, leaning against the kitchen cupboard on the floor, is the largest bag of cat food I have ever seen, with an enormous, crudely drawn penis in black marker stretched across the image of a kitten frolicking in wildflowers. I continue to stare at the bag as I pick up my phone, pressing it to my ear and taking a moment to gather my thoughts before I sigh deeply, turning away from the cat food and looking at my lap. 

I listen to the unusual silence of the house—no record player, no black-and-white game shows with trans-Atlantic accents warbling pleasantly, none of Gran’s soft humming. The most obvious, however—and probably the most jarring—is the absence of Trevor’s loud, impossible noises; his terrible heat and cruel eyes. _Am I relieved_?

“I’ll come meet you.” I say, feeling my stomach drop as soon as the words leave my mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was such a long one! And I also apologize for the spotty posting schedule I have been keeping up. Thank you so much for supporting me and this story. I love you all! <3 <3 :)


End file.
